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Sin and Salvation #5
Svjetlost u kolovozu
"Svjetlost u kolovozu" na stilskoj je razini najrazumljivije Faulknerovo djelo, no kritika je ocijenila da je zbog tematike riječ o autorovu najkompleksnijem romanu - ambicioznom pokušaju zahvaćanja cijelog društva u vrijeme krize.
Faulknera je na pisanje ovog romana inspirirala slika trudnice koja je bosa hodala prašnjavom cestom. Iz te slike postupno se izrodio lik mlade trudne djevojke Lene Grove koja dolazi u Jefferson, glavni grad izmišljene pokrajine Yoknapatawphe, kako bi pronašla oca svog nerođenog djeteta.
Faulknera je na pisanje ovog romana inspirirala slika trudnice koja je bosa hodala prašnjavom cestom. Iz te slike postupno se izrodio lik mlade trudne djevojke Lene Grove koja dolazi u Jefferson, glavni grad izmišljene pokrajine Yoknapatawphe, kako bi pronašla oca svog nerođenog djeteta.
415 pages, Hardcover
First published March 12, 1932
3461 people are currently reading
79458 people want to read
About the author
William Faulkner
1,268 books10.5k followersWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,719 reviews
March 5, 2023
It occurs to me on reading Light in August for the third time, that if America were ever to try to come to terms with its legacy of slavery--unlikely now at this late date--but if it ever were to empanel some kind of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, like the one South Africa had after apartheid, and which seems especially needed now that we are mourning the shooting deaths by cops of so many unarmed black men, then William Faulkner's novels, certainly this one, should be part of the background documentation of such a process. What Faulkner has done here is to lay bare the racial tragedy of the American South in the 1920s such as no one else has ever done. Certainly the works of Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison and others should be part of that documentation too. But what Faulkner shows us in Light in August seems to me a wholly unique recounting — despite the fact that it is fiction — of a huge part of our national catastrophe.
Joe Christmas lives as a white man but believes he has a little African blood in him. He is left by persons unknown at a white orphanage one Christmas day, thus his name. At age five, when his African blood is "discovered" by the staff of the orphanage, he is quickly placed in the foster home of a white man named McEachern who lives in a kind of perpetual, self-dramatizing, Christian self-abasement, which he forces on his new stepson, and which Joe ultimately rejects. Perhaps if he had been luckier in his foster parents Joe would not have developed as he has, but his upbringing by McEachern is brutal, physically abusive, traumatic. When he escapes his room one night to go dancing with a local harlot, about whom he entertains romantic notions of love and marriage, he is followed by his step-father who accuses him of whoring. Joe kills his step-father on the dance floor and runs for his life.
For fifteen years he drifts. The unfortunate (and I would argue false) dichotomy of black and white seems to rip Joe Christmas apart before our eyes. Nowhere can he feel at home. His self-hatred becomes outsize, beyond reason. Some people broken by misfortune become psychotic, as Joe does, though there is probably some genetic predisposition to become so. Anyway, Joe starts to hears voices. Who is he? Can he truly be anyone? After he wanders much of the country, at one point living in a black community in Chicago where he is condemned for being white, he winds up back in the American south, in Jefferson, Mississippi, where he gets a job shoveling sawdust in a planing mill. He has no friendships, no sense of humor, no apparent hopes, no dreams. He is bitter and angry, deprived of all loving human contact despite his efforts to secure it.
Joanna Burden lives alone in Jefferson and is the sole remaining representative of a family of northern abolitionists that moved south during Reconstruction to prevent the post-slavery degradation of African-Americans, which the zealous Burden patriarch was determined to stop. They were despised by the white community. When the patriarch accompanied by his grandson argued too vociferously for voting rights for blacks in Jefferson one day, they were gunned down by a single bullet from the gun of Colonel Sartoris. Joanna's father buried them on the estate in unmarked graves, so they would not be disinterred and desecrated. Joanna's family was one of means which maintained a dozen or more homes and schools for African-Americans in the south, the administration of which she is still involved.
When Joe Christmas stumbles on Joanna's house five miles from Jefferson, he breaks into the kitchen pantry. Unperturbed by the intrusion, Joanna starts to leave food out for him every evening while allowing him to stay on the estate in what were once accommodations for black household servants. To the reader Joanna represents perhaps Joe's last chance to find, if not love, then some kind of mutually supportive relationship. But he is too twisted by his misfortunes by this time and the only relationship with her he is capable of is one of unloving sex and disdain for her unattractive, manish ways. Besides, who could possibly love anyone so undeserving as himself? Her interest in him must therefore be misplaced.
When Joe Christmas then does a bad, bad thing, which precipitates his flight across bog and bramble and forest and marsh of Yoknapatawpha County, pursued by the Sheriff and his deputies and a pack of honking hounds, why, the reader is in for quite a thrilling chase. In this section you will find some of the finest descriptive writing in the book. (Faulkner is always so good with figures moving through landscape.) While we do not forgive Joe for what he has done, we understand him, and even feel for him in his travails. How Faulkner is able to do this, to evoke the reader's sympathy for Joe Christmas despite his evil acts, is one reason this reader has returned repeatedly to this text. I do not think it going too far to say that here we find in Joe something of what Shakespeare was able to embue Richard III, with Joe's half-caste status standing in for Richard's more apparent physical disfigurement.
The novel's use of psychic distance is perfect. By that I mean the distance the reader feels between himself and the events of the story. Faulkner seems to stand off a bit and record everything from that seemingly objective remove, so the cascade of detail is neither overwhelming in its specificity nor too thin. It is in fact stunningly consistent throughout. The story is rich, emotionally complex, but rendered for the most part simply and cleanly. The mannerisms of the author's late style (polysyllabic words, outlandishly tortuous locutions, etc) are apparent only fleetingly. This masterpiece flows mellifluously yet plainly, without needless clutter. Its story might be summarized in a paragraph or two, but its execution is so rich, so thorough, so vivid, that it takes the breath away.
Joe Christmas lives as a white man but believes he has a little African blood in him. He is left by persons unknown at a white orphanage one Christmas day, thus his name. At age five, when his African blood is "discovered" by the staff of the orphanage, he is quickly placed in the foster home of a white man named McEachern who lives in a kind of perpetual, self-dramatizing, Christian self-abasement, which he forces on his new stepson, and which Joe ultimately rejects. Perhaps if he had been luckier in his foster parents Joe would not have developed as he has, but his upbringing by McEachern is brutal, physically abusive, traumatic. When he escapes his room one night to go dancing with a local harlot, about whom he entertains romantic notions of love and marriage, he is followed by his step-father who accuses him of whoring. Joe kills his step-father on the dance floor and runs for his life.
For fifteen years he drifts. The unfortunate (and I would argue false) dichotomy of black and white seems to rip Joe Christmas apart before our eyes. Nowhere can he feel at home. His self-hatred becomes outsize, beyond reason. Some people broken by misfortune become psychotic, as Joe does, though there is probably some genetic predisposition to become so. Anyway, Joe starts to hears voices. Who is he? Can he truly be anyone? After he wanders much of the country, at one point living in a black community in Chicago where he is condemned for being white, he winds up back in the American south, in Jefferson, Mississippi, where he gets a job shoveling sawdust in a planing mill. He has no friendships, no sense of humor, no apparent hopes, no dreams. He is bitter and angry, deprived of all loving human contact despite his efforts to secure it.
Joanna Burden lives alone in Jefferson and is the sole remaining representative of a family of northern abolitionists that moved south during Reconstruction to prevent the post-slavery degradation of African-Americans, which the zealous Burden patriarch was determined to stop. They were despised by the white community. When the patriarch accompanied by his grandson argued too vociferously for voting rights for blacks in Jefferson one day, they were gunned down by a single bullet from the gun of Colonel Sartoris. Joanna's father buried them on the estate in unmarked graves, so they would not be disinterred and desecrated. Joanna's family was one of means which maintained a dozen or more homes and schools for African-Americans in the south, the administration of which she is still involved.
When Joe Christmas stumbles on Joanna's house five miles from Jefferson, he breaks into the kitchen pantry. Unperturbed by the intrusion, Joanna starts to leave food out for him every evening while allowing him to stay on the estate in what were once accommodations for black household servants. To the reader Joanna represents perhaps Joe's last chance to find, if not love, then some kind of mutually supportive relationship. But he is too twisted by his misfortunes by this time and the only relationship with her he is capable of is one of unloving sex and disdain for her unattractive, manish ways. Besides, who could possibly love anyone so undeserving as himself? Her interest in him must therefore be misplaced.
When Joe Christmas then does a bad, bad thing, which precipitates his flight across bog and bramble and forest and marsh of Yoknapatawpha County, pursued by the Sheriff and his deputies and a pack of honking hounds, why, the reader is in for quite a thrilling chase. In this section you will find some of the finest descriptive writing in the book. (Faulkner is always so good with figures moving through landscape.) While we do not forgive Joe for what he has done, we understand him, and even feel for him in his travails. How Faulkner is able to do this, to evoke the reader's sympathy for Joe Christmas despite his evil acts, is one reason this reader has returned repeatedly to this text. I do not think it going too far to say that here we find in Joe something of what Shakespeare was able to embue Richard III, with Joe's half-caste status standing in for Richard's more apparent physical disfigurement.
The novel's use of psychic distance is perfect. By that I mean the distance the reader feels between himself and the events of the story. Faulkner seems to stand off a bit and record everything from that seemingly objective remove, so the cascade of detail is neither overwhelming in its specificity nor too thin. It is in fact stunningly consistent throughout. The story is rich, emotionally complex, but rendered for the most part simply and cleanly. The mannerisms of the author's late style (polysyllabic words, outlandishly tortuous locutions, etc) are apparent only fleetingly. This masterpiece flows mellifluously yet plainly, without needless clutter. Its story might be summarized in a paragraph or two, but its execution is so rich, so thorough, so vivid, that it takes the breath away.
May 17, 2019
Light in August, William Faulkner's Portraits of Loneliness and Isolation
A Note Regarding This Review
Today marks the Anniversary of the Death of William Faulkner, July 6, 1962. In remembrance of him and in gratitude his works making me a man better capable of understanding others, I repost this review of my Favorite novel by William Faulkner, Light in August. My Mother died following a lengthy and grueling illness. I had been her caregiver as I had promised her I would. I promised that she would remain living in her home until the last moment possible. I kept that promise until no commercial suppy of oxygen was capable of providing her the amount of oxygen she required to breathe. Her last month was spent in an Intensive Care Unit. It was an especially difficult time for both of us. My Mother was a proud woman, refusing to acknowledge the severity of her illness. On the morning of her death, I was summoned to the hospital. She had breathed her last during a few hours break to sleep. After being a caregiver for so long, I suddenly found myself totally lost. I had nothing I had to do anymore. I was haunted and remain haunted by her appearance as I last saw her. I expected to enter her room and find her "prepared" to see, her eyes closed, covers neatly pulled up, her hands clasping one another. Rather, when I entered the room, her bed was still in the upright position. Her eyes were open. Her mouth hung open. She appeared to have died in the act of screaming. Choking, strangling, gasping for one more breath of air. It is a memory that haunts me to this day. I cannot get my mother's appearance in death out of my head. That morning I felt completely out of place. Lonely, isolated, in a place I no longer belonged. The hospital staff curtly asked where I wanted my Mother's body sent. Numbly, I named the Crematorium I had chosen. I left the hospital, went to the Crematorium, and made all the necessary arrangements. The following day, I travelled to Oxford, Ms. A trip my Mother had made with me frequently. I simply had to DO something. This is the review that I wrote following a visit to Square Books, Oxford, Mississippi. I thank you for your indulgence in my re-posting this piece. For me, my experience was an inspirational one. The trip forced me to put one foot in front of the other. Within the following week, I formed the online group On the Southern Literary Trail. Since the group began its first read in March, 2012, William Faulkner has been the author for whom many of our readers have chosen to read his novels and short stories. This is one of them.
While you may think it strange, I observe the anniversary of William Faulkner's death each year. His favorite whiskey was Jack Daniels, Black Label. This evening I will raise a Black Jack with a splash of water over ice and thank Mr. Faulkner for all he has shared with me, now going on more than forty years
If it were possible I'd have it in Faulkner Country..
Light in August, First Edition, Smith & Haas, New York, New York, 1032
"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." William Faulkner, "Light in August," Chapter Six, Paragraph One.
m
It takes guts to write a review of one of the great American novels by one of the great American writers. I could call it chutzpah. But I'm not Jewish. Just call it Irish-American blarney with a bit of a Cracker twist and a streak of red over my shirt collar. After all, I'm from Alabama.
The truth of the matter is there's been worse hacks than me that tried to take a hatchet to William Faulkner. It's hard to believe any man could be that damned good. Some men, critics for the most part, just can't live with how good he is. So they say he isn't.
But I'm in Oxford, Mississippi this morning. What Oxford hasn't torn down and replaced with high rise apartments and condominiums still leaves traces of William Faulkner that are there for anyone to see if they take the time to look for it.
Last night I met a lovely young woman and her mother over at Square Books. They were down from Joplin, Missouri, for the daughter to take the tour of Ole Miss. She's already been accepted at the University of Alabama, but she thought she should take the Ole Miss tour.
Where you meet the most interesting people in Oxford
We met in the Faulkner section. They were there first. Both were lovely. The daughter was seventeen. Her mother was graced with a timeless beauty that must give her daughter a good deal of satisfaction at what she has to look forward to when she takes a hard look in the mirror in forty years or so.
"Oh," the mother said, "We're in the way."
"No Ma'am. You're not. I never step between a young woman and William Faulkner. It's always nice to see."
"Mom, I don't know which one to get."
"Sweetheart, get all you want. Wherever you go to school, you'll want them."
"But if I get them all, then I'll want to read them all. I'll read them too fast and I won't get what I need to get out of them."
The temptation was too great.
"Miss, just how much Faulkner have you read?"
"I've only read 'The Sound and the Fury.' I don't know where to go next."
I have to admit it. I kind of let out a sigh, and sat down in one of those big easy chairs, conveniently placed by all the works of Faulkner and the many references published by various scholars through the Ole Miss Press.
"Have you ever felt like you didn't belong somewhere? Didn't fit in?"
She had already told me she was seventeen going on eighteen. I figured it was a safe bet she remembered being fifteen pretty well. Fifteen year olds get not belonging anywhere.
I saw her mother smile.
"Well, sure. Hasn't everybody?"
"Oh, yeah. Everybody. That copy of 'Light in August' you're holding there. It's all about that. Nobody in that book belongs where they ought to be."
So over the next few minutes I told her about Lena, walking all the way to Jefferson from Doane's Mill, Alabama looking for the man that made her pregnant. I told her about Joe Christmas, left on the step of an orphanage on Christmas morning, beaten by his foster parent because he couldn't learn his catechism. I told her about Joanna Burden being a Yankee from an abolitionist family who was never welcome in Yoknapatawpha County. And I told her about Preacher Gail Hightower whose wife left him and then committed suicide and how his own congregation wished he wasn't the man in the pulpit.
I asked if she knew what light in august meant. She shook her head no. I told her how livestock dropped their young in August. And I asked her if she'd ever seen those few days of peculiar light on an August day when the shadows were at their deepest and just before dark, before the shadows turned to black how everything flashed gold for just a few seconds, so fast, if you weren't looking for it you would miss it. She hadn't noticed. I told her when she lived some more years she would see it.
There was a tear in her mother's eye. I wondered if she still hadn't seen it.
"Tell me about the man. Tell me about William Faulkner."
And I did. I told her about how he wanted to go to war. How he lied about being shot down. How he wore his Canadian RAF Uniform around Oxford. I told her about Estelle, how he loved her, how he lost her, how he got her back and then wished he hadn't.
William and Estelle Oldham Faulkner, who called the quality of the light in August to her husband's attention
I told her to read, read everything--that Faulkner said that. I told her how he checked mysteries out out of Mac Reed's Drug Store and people started stealing his check out cards because they figured his autograph would be worth something one day.
We ended up laughing and talking a good while.
"Say. If I went to Ole Miss, would you be one of my professors?"
I don't know what it is that makes people think that. Maybe it's the old cardigan sweater with the leather buttons. Maybe it's the white beard. I don't know. It happens a lot, though.
"No, I'm not a professor. I grew up and became Gavin Stevens. I'm a lawyer."
They both laughed. We exchanged pleasantries, information. I told her mother that if her daughter ended up in Tuscaloosa, she could always call me. The daughter left with "Light in August," and "Absalom, Absalom."
The young man working the coffee bar brought me over a cup of coffee in a Flannery O'Connor mug. "It's on the house. You sold that Faulkner."
"No. I sold HER on Faulkner. There's a difference."
"Sir, you know something? You should have been a professor."
Yeah. Maybe so. But everybody's gotta be somewhere, whether they fit in there, or not. Well, it's 8:30. Store opens at nine. They want me in the Faulkner section today if I can stop by. I could use another cup of coffee.
Dedicated to the memory of Miss Maxine Lustig, my guide to Yoknapatawpha County and many other wondrous worlds.
A Note Regarding This Review
Today marks the Anniversary of the Death of William Faulkner, July 6, 1962. In remembrance of him and in gratitude his works making me a man better capable of understanding others, I repost this review of my Favorite novel by William Faulkner, Light in August. My Mother died following a lengthy and grueling illness. I had been her caregiver as I had promised her I would. I promised that she would remain living in her home until the last moment possible. I kept that promise until no commercial suppy of oxygen was capable of providing her the amount of oxygen she required to breathe. Her last month was spent in an Intensive Care Unit. It was an especially difficult time for both of us. My Mother was a proud woman, refusing to acknowledge the severity of her illness. On the morning of her death, I was summoned to the hospital. She had breathed her last during a few hours break to sleep. After being a caregiver for so long, I suddenly found myself totally lost. I had nothing I had to do anymore. I was haunted and remain haunted by her appearance as I last saw her. I expected to enter her room and find her "prepared" to see, her eyes closed, covers neatly pulled up, her hands clasping one another. Rather, when I entered the room, her bed was still in the upright position. Her eyes were open. Her mouth hung open. She appeared to have died in the act of screaming. Choking, strangling, gasping for one more breath of air. It is a memory that haunts me to this day. I cannot get my mother's appearance in death out of my head. That morning I felt completely out of place. Lonely, isolated, in a place I no longer belonged. The hospital staff curtly asked where I wanted my Mother's body sent. Numbly, I named the Crematorium I had chosen. I left the hospital, went to the Crematorium, and made all the necessary arrangements. The following day, I travelled to Oxford, Ms. A trip my Mother had made with me frequently. I simply had to DO something. This is the review that I wrote following a visit to Square Books, Oxford, Mississippi. I thank you for your indulgence in my re-posting this piece. For me, my experience was an inspirational one. The trip forced me to put one foot in front of the other. Within the following week, I formed the online group On the Southern Literary Trail. Since the group began its first read in March, 2012, William Faulkner has been the author for whom many of our readers have chosen to read his novels and short stories. This is one of them.
While you may think it strange, I observe the anniversary of William Faulkner's death each year. His favorite whiskey was Jack Daniels, Black Label. This evening I will raise a Black Jack with a splash of water over ice and thank Mr. Faulkner for all he has shared with me, now going on more than forty years
If it were possible I'd have it in Faulkner Country..
Light in August, First Edition, Smith & Haas, New York, New York, 1032
"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." William Faulkner, "Light in August," Chapter Six, Paragraph One.
m
It takes guts to write a review of one of the great American novels by one of the great American writers. I could call it chutzpah. But I'm not Jewish. Just call it Irish-American blarney with a bit of a Cracker twist and a streak of red over my shirt collar. After all, I'm from Alabama.
The truth of the matter is there's been worse hacks than me that tried to take a hatchet to William Faulkner. It's hard to believe any man could be that damned good. Some men, critics for the most part, just can't live with how good he is. So they say he isn't.
But I'm in Oxford, Mississippi this morning. What Oxford hasn't torn down and replaced with high rise apartments and condominiums still leaves traces of William Faulkner that are there for anyone to see if they take the time to look for it.
Last night I met a lovely young woman and her mother over at Square Books. They were down from Joplin, Missouri, for the daughter to take the tour of Ole Miss. She's already been accepted at the University of Alabama, but she thought she should take the Ole Miss tour.
Where you meet the most interesting people in Oxford
We met in the Faulkner section. They were there first. Both were lovely. The daughter was seventeen. Her mother was graced with a timeless beauty that must give her daughter a good deal of satisfaction at what she has to look forward to when she takes a hard look in the mirror in forty years or so.
"Oh," the mother said, "We're in the way."
"No Ma'am. You're not. I never step between a young woman and William Faulkner. It's always nice to see."
"Mom, I don't know which one to get."
"Sweetheart, get all you want. Wherever you go to school, you'll want them."
"But if I get them all, then I'll want to read them all. I'll read them too fast and I won't get what I need to get out of them."
The temptation was too great.
"Miss, just how much Faulkner have you read?"
"I've only read 'The Sound and the Fury.' I don't know where to go next."
I have to admit it. I kind of let out a sigh, and sat down in one of those big easy chairs, conveniently placed by all the works of Faulkner and the many references published by various scholars through the Ole Miss Press.
"Have you ever felt like you didn't belong somewhere? Didn't fit in?"
She had already told me she was seventeen going on eighteen. I figured it was a safe bet she remembered being fifteen pretty well. Fifteen year olds get not belonging anywhere.
I saw her mother smile.
"Well, sure. Hasn't everybody?"
"Oh, yeah. Everybody. That copy of 'Light in August' you're holding there. It's all about that. Nobody in that book belongs where they ought to be."
So over the next few minutes I told her about Lena, walking all the way to Jefferson from Doane's Mill, Alabama looking for the man that made her pregnant. I told her about Joe Christmas, left on the step of an orphanage on Christmas morning, beaten by his foster parent because he couldn't learn his catechism. I told her about Joanna Burden being a Yankee from an abolitionist family who was never welcome in Yoknapatawpha County. And I told her about Preacher Gail Hightower whose wife left him and then committed suicide and how his own congregation wished he wasn't the man in the pulpit.
I asked if she knew what light in august meant. She shook her head no. I told her how livestock dropped their young in August. And I asked her if she'd ever seen those few days of peculiar light on an August day when the shadows were at their deepest and just before dark, before the shadows turned to black how everything flashed gold for just a few seconds, so fast, if you weren't looking for it you would miss it. She hadn't noticed. I told her when she lived some more years she would see it.
There was a tear in her mother's eye. I wondered if she still hadn't seen it.
"Tell me about the man. Tell me about William Faulkner."
And I did. I told her about how he wanted to go to war. How he lied about being shot down. How he wore his Canadian RAF Uniform around Oxford. I told her about Estelle, how he loved her, how he lost her, how he got her back and then wished he hadn't.
William and Estelle Oldham Faulkner, who called the quality of the light in August to her husband's attention
I told her to read, read everything--that Faulkner said that. I told her how he checked mysteries out out of Mac Reed's Drug Store and people started stealing his check out cards because they figured his autograph would be worth something one day.
We ended up laughing and talking a good while.
"Say. If I went to Ole Miss, would you be one of my professors?"
I don't know what it is that makes people think that. Maybe it's the old cardigan sweater with the leather buttons. Maybe it's the white beard. I don't know. It happens a lot, though.
"No, I'm not a professor. I grew up and became Gavin Stevens. I'm a lawyer."
They both laughed. We exchanged pleasantries, information. I told her mother that if her daughter ended up in Tuscaloosa, she could always call me. The daughter left with "Light in August," and "Absalom, Absalom."
The young man working the coffee bar brought me over a cup of coffee in a Flannery O'Connor mug. "It's on the house. You sold that Faulkner."
"No. I sold HER on Faulkner. There's a difference."
"Sir, you know something? You should have been a professor."
Yeah. Maybe so. But everybody's gotta be somewhere, whether they fit in there, or not. Well, it's 8:30. Store opens at nine. They want me in the Faulkner section today if I can stop by. I could use another cup of coffee.
Dedicated to the memory of Miss Maxine Lustig, my guide to Yoknapatawpha County and many other wondrous worlds.
May 24, 2025
To me Light in August is one of William Faulkner’s best novels. And the language of the book is the highest achievement.
Misfits… Outsiders… Outcasts… Man is an enigma…
Every man wants to find his place in the sun and to be happy and free… But the freedom of a man is restricted by the freedom of other men and they may prevent one from finding one’s desired place… Then a man tries to gain one’s freedom through crime… God will save… Will he?
God abides all alone in the divine void of abstract absolute…
Misfits… Outsiders… Outcasts… Man is an enigma…
He thought that it was loneliness which he was trying to escape and not himself. But the street ran on: catlike, one place was the same as another to him. But in none of them could he be quiet. But the street ran on in its moods and phases, always empty: he might have seen himself as in numberless avatars, in silence, doomed with motion, driven by the courage of flagged and spurred despair; by the despair of courage whose opportunities had to be flagged and spurred. He was thirty three years old.
Every man wants to find his place in the sun and to be happy and free… But the freedom of a man is restricted by the freedom of other men and they may prevent one from finding one’s desired place… Then a man tries to gain one’s freedom through crime… God will save… Will he?
He believed with a calm joy that if ever there was shelter, it would be the Church; that if ever truth could walk naked and without shame or fear, it would be in the seminary. When he believed that he had heard the call it seemed to him that he could see his future, his life, intact and on all sides complete and inviolable, like a classic and serene vase, where the spirit could be born anew sheltered from the harsh gale of living and die so, peacefully, with only the far sound of the circumvented wind, with scarce even a handful of rotting dust to be disposed of. That was what the word seminary meant: quiet and safe walls within which the hampered and garment-worried spirit could learn anew serenity to contemplate without horror or alarm its own nakedness.
God abides all alone in the divine void of abstract absolute…
May 27, 2019
I’m not going to attempt to write an erudite review of this book, because then I would simply be revealing the glaring holes in my Faulkner education. A scholarly write-up of this brilliant man’s work is best left to students of college literature classes or perhaps a well-taught AP English course or another reviewer more adept than I. Confession: I was hesitant to read this, but I was determined to make another attempt after a failed one several years ago when I picked up a copy of Absalom, Absalom! I vaguely recall reading Faulkner in high school, and the fact that I can’t quite remember the details tells me it was probably neither a poor nor an exceedingly enjoyable experience. I am happy to say that this time around I was sold! Light in August is not only accessible, in my opinion, but is also a remarkable work of fiction.
This is what I would call Southern Gothic fiction at its finest. Jefferson, Mississippi in the 1920s was rife with racism, misogyny and religious fanaticism. The depiction of every single character is striking. Their lives are tragic, lonely, and often violent. I couldn’t help but feel that each and every one of us must be damned in one way or another after reading this! A man of mixed race, Joe Christmas is the epitome of a person consumed by an identity crisis. He strives to find where he belongs, and in the process becomes completely alienated. He cannot find his place as either a black or a white man. Society feeds and inflames his feelings of alienation.
"Nothing can look quite as lonely as a big man going along an empty street. Yet though he was not large, not tall, he contrived somehow to look more lonely than a lone telephone pole in the middle of a desert. In the wide, empty, shadowbrooded street he looked like a phantom, a spirit, strayed out of its own world, and lost."
The other characters that populate this novel are equally compelling and I won’t soon forget Lena Grove, Byron Bunch, Lucas Burch, Reverend Hightower, Joanna Burden and many more. Since what truly sells me with any book is the writing itself (I’m not a plot only kind of gal), it would be remiss if I failed to mention the pure artistry of Faulkner’s prose – often poetic, deeply emotive, and highly evocative of this time and place.
"He can remember how when he was young, after he first came to Jefferson from the seminary, how that fading copper light would seem almost audible, like a dying yellow fall of trumpets dying into an interval of silence and waiting, out of which they would presently come. Already, even before the falling horns had ceased, it would seem to him that he could hear the beginning thunder not yet louder than a whisper, a rumor, in the air."
I feel at a loss to say more about this book, except that we must continue to reflect on our humanity and our obligations towards others. We must as a society strive to work harder on inclusiveness and acceptance of others. Faulkner’s message rings all too clear right now.
It was with tremendous sadness that on the same evening that I finished reading this masterpiece, on May 22, 2019, I learned that a young classmate of my daughter’s, a fifteen year old young man, had taken his own life. A teenager who seemed always cheerful and one whose goal was to make others laugh at his charming antics. He wanted to embrace others. What amount of misery and feelings of isolation must have resided in his hurting soul for him to take such a drastic and irrevocable step; I can’t begin to imagine the pain he felt and now that of his grieving family.
This is what I would call Southern Gothic fiction at its finest. Jefferson, Mississippi in the 1920s was rife with racism, misogyny and religious fanaticism. The depiction of every single character is striking. Their lives are tragic, lonely, and often violent. I couldn’t help but feel that each and every one of us must be damned in one way or another after reading this! A man of mixed race, Joe Christmas is the epitome of a person consumed by an identity crisis. He strives to find where he belongs, and in the process becomes completely alienated. He cannot find his place as either a black or a white man. Society feeds and inflames his feelings of alienation.
"Nothing can look quite as lonely as a big man going along an empty street. Yet though he was not large, not tall, he contrived somehow to look more lonely than a lone telephone pole in the middle of a desert. In the wide, empty, shadowbrooded street he looked like a phantom, a spirit, strayed out of its own world, and lost."
The other characters that populate this novel are equally compelling and I won’t soon forget Lena Grove, Byron Bunch, Lucas Burch, Reverend Hightower, Joanna Burden and many more. Since what truly sells me with any book is the writing itself (I’m not a plot only kind of gal), it would be remiss if I failed to mention the pure artistry of Faulkner’s prose – often poetic, deeply emotive, and highly evocative of this time and place.
"He can remember how when he was young, after he first came to Jefferson from the seminary, how that fading copper light would seem almost audible, like a dying yellow fall of trumpets dying into an interval of silence and waiting, out of which they would presently come. Already, even before the falling horns had ceased, it would seem to him that he could hear the beginning thunder not yet louder than a whisper, a rumor, in the air."
I feel at a loss to say more about this book, except that we must continue to reflect on our humanity and our obligations towards others. We must as a society strive to work harder on inclusiveness and acceptance of others. Faulkner’s message rings all too clear right now.
It was with tremendous sadness that on the same evening that I finished reading this masterpiece, on May 22, 2019, I learned that a young classmate of my daughter’s, a fifteen year old young man, had taken his own life. A teenager who seemed always cheerful and one whose goal was to make others laugh at his charming antics. He wanted to embrace others. What amount of misery and feelings of isolation must have resided in his hurting soul for him to take such a drastic and irrevocable step; I can’t begin to imagine the pain he felt and now that of his grieving family.
June 11, 2020
I can’t figure out if reading Faulkner – particularly THIS one – at the very time of the massive George Floyd protests is hideously inappropriate or exactly the right thing to do. All I knew when I started was that I wanted to give Faulkner another shot. Many years ago I laboured heroically through The Sound and the Fury and I seem to remember I thought it was brilliant, but maybe that was just because I survived it. Then more recently I read As I Lay Dying and that one was great, no equivocation, I loved that one. So … maybe I’m a Faulkner fan. Let’s see.
Turns out, I’m not.
There are major problems with this novel.
FIRST PROBLEM
The story of Joe Christmas is the main thread here. We get his whole life story. The big thing about Joe is his race - this is the Deep South and the 1920s, after all. He looks like a white guy but he’s been told he has some “Negro” blood in him. This is just a rumour, no one has any proof. He could and does live in white society without anyone raising an eyebrow. The only way people get to know he might be part black is that he keeps telling them. Knowing he might possibly be “part” (what part, 5%, 10%? this is never debated) Negro crushes Joe’s life, it drives him crazy. And everyone he obsessively tells reacts as if he’s just ripped off his human facemask to reveal a mass of wriggling tentacles. They rear back in horror, they hiss, they throw him out with great force. It’s like if he sticks around they might catch blackness from him. It’s like there was an especial disgust in finding they were in a room with a part-black guy without realising it.
Reading this in the UK in 2020 is strange, more than strange, it’s virtually incomprehensible. There are around 1.25 million mixed race people in this country. No one bats an eyelid, nobody cares. The only thing people are likely to say is “oh those mixed race kids have such great hair”. Now this is not to say racism doesn’t exist in the UK, far from it. But this horror of racial mixing, of white people being in some way contaminated by black “blood” (we would call it genes now I guess) is not part of the picture.
So it seems to a modern reader as if Joe Christmas is suffering from an imaginary disease. If he just shut up about it, no one would know. But he can’t. So he suffers horribly. Check this extraordinary passage :
Because the black blood drove him first to the negro cabin. And then the white blood drove him out of there, as it was the black blood which snatched up the pistol and the white blood which would not let him fire it. And it was the white blood which sent him to the minister, which rising in him for the last and final time, sent him against all reason and all reality, into the embrace of a chimera, a blind faith in something read in a printed Book. Then I believe that the white blood deserted him for the moment.
I mean, WTF?
SECOND PROBLEM
The N word is used liberally on every other page. If that’s going to offend you, steer clear of Light in August. Not only is it used a whole lot, it’s used by the characters in the most offensive way possible.
THIRD PROBLEM
Faulkner thinks us readers have got unlimited patience, so he just doesn’t give a rat’s or any other mammalian ass about moving the story forward. At first you think hey, 100 pages, this is so straightforward, I thought Faulkboy was supposed to be tough. And then everything screeches to a halt while a huge backstory is told in great detail. Then we shoot off on another entirely different story. Then we have to have this person’s tiresome biography, and that character too, and then we jump back to fill in the bit of a part of the story only this newly introduced character was present at. A good example is the very last chapter of this long book – we get a totally new character introduced right there. Cute.
This stop-start monkey business was like to drive me crazy.
FOURTH PROBLEM
The writing style changes all the time, from chapter to chapter and within chapters. I love this idea, of course, I am a fan of Ulysses, but some of Faulkner’s styles are going to give you the heebyjeebies. He knows what he’s doing, he’s being deliberately difficult, unless he was drunk in charge of a typewriter. He seems to enjoy complication verging on bafflement for its own sake.
Joe Christmas is wondering about the “two creatures” that seem to inhabit his new lover
Now it would be that still, cold, contained figure of the first phase who, even though lost and damned, remained somehow impervious and impregnable; then it would be the other, the second one, who in furious denial of that impregnability strove to drown in the black abyss of its own creating that physical purity which had been preserved too long now even to be lost.
The neighbours poke about in the ruins of a burned house where a woman died :
So they moiled and clotted, believing that the flames, the blood, the body that had died three years ago and had just now begun to live again, cried out for vengeance, not believing that the rapt infury of the flames and the immobility of the body were both affirmations of an attained bourne beyond the hurt and harm of man.
A guy tiptoes into an old guy’s room to wake him up :
There was a quality of profound and complete surrender in it. Not of exhaustion, but surrender, as though he had given over and relinquished completely that grip upon that blending of pride and hope and vanity and fear, that strength to cling to either defeat. or victory, which is the I-Am, and the relinquishment of which is usually death.
Also Faulkner comes up with some really ridiculous similes – here are eyes like beasts :
She watched him, holding his eyes up to hers like two beasts about to break, as if he knew that when they broke this time he would never catch them, turn them again, and that he himself would be lost.
And his pages and pages of loony old man preacher ravings about God’s abomination (i.e. his grandson) and bitches and whores (i.e. his daughter) sound exactly like somebody’s parody of the florid Bible-soaked nutcases of The South
And he just had to watch and to wait, and he did and it was in the Lord’s good time, for evil to come from evil. And the doctor’s Jezebel come running from her lustful bed, still astink with sin and fear. (etc etc etc)
FIFTH PROBLEM : WHAT FAULKNER DID NOT BELIEVE
Round about the time he was writing this book the Carter Family were recording one of their famous songs, you know the one, it goes
Well there's a dark and a troubled side of life.
There's a bright and a sunny side too.
But if you meet with the darkness and strife,
The sunny side we also may view.
Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,
Keep on the sunny side of life.
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way,
If we keep on the sunny side of life.
Faulkner did not believe in keeping on the sunny side. No. Not even slightly. This novel is a gigantic miseryfest.
I saw a review that described all of this Southern Gothic genre of literature, including old man Faulkner, as “morose scab picking”. Wow, that’s a little harsh.
AND IN THE END
I mean, the guy can write, he has command and he has immense material and he has a great milieu and all of that going for him. It’s just that three quarters the way through Light in August you may feel that you are going to die. Probably in a bizarre agricultural accident.
BONUS TRACK
his face sweating, his lip lifted upon his clenched and rotting teeth from about which the long sagging of flabby and puttycolored flesh falls away
oh shut up, William
Turns out, I’m not.
There are major problems with this novel.
FIRST PROBLEM
The story of Joe Christmas is the main thread here. We get his whole life story. The big thing about Joe is his race - this is the Deep South and the 1920s, after all. He looks like a white guy but he’s been told he has some “Negro” blood in him. This is just a rumour, no one has any proof. He could and does live in white society without anyone raising an eyebrow. The only way people get to know he might be part black is that he keeps telling them. Knowing he might possibly be “part” (what part, 5%, 10%? this is never debated) Negro crushes Joe’s life, it drives him crazy. And everyone he obsessively tells reacts as if he’s just ripped off his human facemask to reveal a mass of wriggling tentacles. They rear back in horror, they hiss, they throw him out with great force. It’s like if he sticks around they might catch blackness from him. It’s like there was an especial disgust in finding they were in a room with a part-black guy without realising it.
Reading this in the UK in 2020 is strange, more than strange, it’s virtually incomprehensible. There are around 1.25 million mixed race people in this country. No one bats an eyelid, nobody cares. The only thing people are likely to say is “oh those mixed race kids have such great hair”. Now this is not to say racism doesn’t exist in the UK, far from it. But this horror of racial mixing, of white people being in some way contaminated by black “blood” (we would call it genes now I guess) is not part of the picture.
So it seems to a modern reader as if Joe Christmas is suffering from an imaginary disease. If he just shut up about it, no one would know. But he can’t. So he suffers horribly. Check this extraordinary passage :
Because the black blood drove him first to the negro cabin. And then the white blood drove him out of there, as it was the black blood which snatched up the pistol and the white blood which would not let him fire it. And it was the white blood which sent him to the minister, which rising in him for the last and final time, sent him against all reason and all reality, into the embrace of a chimera, a blind faith in something read in a printed Book. Then I believe that the white blood deserted him for the moment.
I mean, WTF?
SECOND PROBLEM
The N word is used liberally on every other page. If that’s going to offend you, steer clear of Light in August. Not only is it used a whole lot, it’s used by the characters in the most offensive way possible.
THIRD PROBLEM
Faulkner thinks us readers have got unlimited patience, so he just doesn’t give a rat’s or any other mammalian ass about moving the story forward. At first you think hey, 100 pages, this is so straightforward, I thought Faulkboy was supposed to be tough. And then everything screeches to a halt while a huge backstory is told in great detail. Then we shoot off on another entirely different story. Then we have to have this person’s tiresome biography, and that character too, and then we jump back to fill in the bit of a part of the story only this newly introduced character was present at. A good example is the very last chapter of this long book – we get a totally new character introduced right there. Cute.
This stop-start monkey business was like to drive me crazy.
FOURTH PROBLEM
The writing style changes all the time, from chapter to chapter and within chapters. I love this idea, of course, I am a fan of Ulysses, but some of Faulkner’s styles are going to give you the heebyjeebies. He knows what he’s doing, he’s being deliberately difficult, unless he was drunk in charge of a typewriter. He seems to enjoy complication verging on bafflement for its own sake.
Joe Christmas is wondering about the “two creatures” that seem to inhabit his new lover
Now it would be that still, cold, contained figure of the first phase who, even though lost and damned, remained somehow impervious and impregnable; then it would be the other, the second one, who in furious denial of that impregnability strove to drown in the black abyss of its own creating that physical purity which had been preserved too long now even to be lost.
The neighbours poke about in the ruins of a burned house where a woman died :
So they moiled and clotted, believing that the flames, the blood, the body that had died three years ago and had just now begun to live again, cried out for vengeance, not believing that the rapt infury of the flames and the immobility of the body were both affirmations of an attained bourne beyond the hurt and harm of man.
A guy tiptoes into an old guy’s room to wake him up :
There was a quality of profound and complete surrender in it. Not of exhaustion, but surrender, as though he had given over and relinquished completely that grip upon that blending of pride and hope and vanity and fear, that strength to cling to either defeat. or victory, which is the I-Am, and the relinquishment of which is usually death.
Also Faulkner comes up with some really ridiculous similes – here are eyes like beasts :
She watched him, holding his eyes up to hers like two beasts about to break, as if he knew that when they broke this time he would never catch them, turn them again, and that he himself would be lost.
And his pages and pages of loony old man preacher ravings about God’s abomination (i.e. his grandson) and bitches and whores (i.e. his daughter) sound exactly like somebody’s parody of the florid Bible-soaked nutcases of The South
And he just had to watch and to wait, and he did and it was in the Lord’s good time, for evil to come from evil. And the doctor’s Jezebel come running from her lustful bed, still astink with sin and fear. (etc etc etc)
FIFTH PROBLEM : WHAT FAULKNER DID NOT BELIEVE
Round about the time he was writing this book the Carter Family were recording one of their famous songs, you know the one, it goes
Well there's a dark and a troubled side of life.
There's a bright and a sunny side too.
But if you meet with the darkness and strife,
The sunny side we also may view.
Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,
Keep on the sunny side of life.
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way,
If we keep on the sunny side of life.
Faulkner did not believe in keeping on the sunny side. No. Not even slightly. This novel is a gigantic miseryfest.
I saw a review that described all of this Southern Gothic genre of literature, including old man Faulkner, as “morose scab picking”. Wow, that’s a little harsh.
AND IN THE END
I mean, the guy can write, he has command and he has immense material and he has a great milieu and all of that going for him. It’s just that three quarters the way through Light in August you may feel that you are going to die. Probably in a bizarre agricultural accident.
BONUS TRACK
his face sweating, his lip lifted upon his clenched and rotting teeth from about which the long sagging of flabby and puttycolored flesh falls away
oh shut up, William
January 8, 2020
Luz de agosto es una fabulosa novela. Usted lo sabe, yo lo sé, y lo sabe casi todo el mundo, y aun así, tengo que decirle señor Faulkner que, aunque la he disfrutado, tampoco han sido raros los momentos en los que usted me ha desconcertado y, al final, le he de decir, siempre humildemente, que no me ha parecido una novela redonda. Intentaré explicarme, pues seguro que, como usted, hay ya más de uno que se ha llevado las manos a la cabeza.
Ya sabía, por mi lectura de “El ruido y la furia, que a usted hay que leerle en ocasiones como si de música se tratara, dejándose llevar por la cadencia sin intentar comprenderlo todo. Es la suya una música en la que hay notas que uno solo puede intuir, notas que no se llegan a comprender del todo o nada en absoluto e incluso notas que no se entienden para qué fueron puestas ahí. Afortunadamente, en todos los casos, al poco, la música retoma su melodía y el disfrute vuelve a ser la norma.
Entre esas notas a las que me refiero están algunos de los comportamientos de los personajes, ciertas acumulaciones de adjetivos que en lugar de precisar el concepto terminan por desfigurármelo, la combinación de algunas palabras que solo en sueños indigestos puedo concebir juntas, esa sensibilidad que me es tan extraña, tan incomprensible y que alude a olores que se tocan, luces que se huelen, sonidos que se saborean y que me sacan del relato, aunque sea solo temporalmente. Pero sobre todo, no he sido capaz de encontrar el motivo que le llevó a combinar las tres historias que vertebran la novela y que guardan una importante desproporción entre ellas. En mi inopinada, y seguramente equivocada opinión, cada una es innecesaria para las otras dos y tanto la de Lena como la de Hightower, con un tratamiento adecuado, podrían haber formado parte del glorioso conjunto de pequeñas historias que jalonan y enriquecen la columna vertebral de la novela que es Christmas, indiscutible protagonista del relato.
July 24, 2025
It is Faulkner's first book, which I read long ago; I have dazzling memories. Thanks to this novel, I became passionate about this author and feared disappointment.
It is undoubtedly Faulkner's most constructed novel, coming closest to the status of a great classic. The book opens and closes with Lena, a young pregnant woman at the beginning of the story, who has crossed several states in search of the father of her child. Lena is an embodiment of absolute and serene femininity; she reminds me of those prehistoric fertility goddesses; nothing seems to disturb her deep tranquility.
And between this beginning and this end, which radiates this light present in the title, there is violence, injustice, stupidity, and the suffering of beings who cannot find their place. In the center, Joe Christmas, whose terrible story we are gradually discovering, highlights all the flaws and violence of this southern society. Puritanical, racist, not accepting otherness, neither between races nor the sexes, based on hatred of the other and ultimately contempt of oneself.
For me, it is one of the most beautiful books ever written that marks us forever.
It is undoubtedly Faulkner's most constructed novel, coming closest to the status of a great classic. The book opens and closes with Lena, a young pregnant woman at the beginning of the story, who has crossed several states in search of the father of her child. Lena is an embodiment of absolute and serene femininity; she reminds me of those prehistoric fertility goddesses; nothing seems to disturb her deep tranquility.
And between this beginning and this end, which radiates this light present in the title, there is violence, injustice, stupidity, and the suffering of beings who cannot find their place. In the center, Joe Christmas, whose terrible story we are gradually discovering, highlights all the flaws and violence of this southern society. Puritanical, racist, not accepting otherness, neither between races nor the sexes, based on hatred of the other and ultimately contempt of oneself.
For me, it is one of the most beautiful books ever written that marks us forever.
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December 5, 2024
Faulkner writes prose that pauses to pour itself a drink and gets sidetracked telling you about the bottle and I think that is beautiful.
July 27, 2017
"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders".Are there many such novels that delve deep into our souls and that makes us suffer and weep? I believe there are many, but not many that imprison us in its tidings and with their beauty in such a way that escape is an impossibility. Yes, we cannot run away any less than its wretched characters could. Indeed, William Faulkner in Light in August wrote a tragedy set in the fictional Jefferson that compares with the classic tale of Oedipus.
"And so as he sat in the shadows of the ruined garden on that August night three months later and heard the clock in the courthouse two miles away strike ten and then eleven, he believed with calm paradox that he was the volitionless servant of the fatality in which he believed that he did not believe. He was saying to himself I had to do it already in the past tense; I had to do it. She said so herself."
And I cried with Joe Christmas, as with the rest of Faulkner’s poor damned people. Yes, damned, for that was their destiny since they came into the world. Every page that I read, I felt amazed by Faulkner's beautiful and sad words. I felt like closing my book every other page, but he caught me by my love of words and literature and did not let me give up on a life of pure hell. The story of his damned hit hard on my poor souls, and I felt used by him. Used yes, but in the good sense, by the colors of his spiritual disquiet transmitted to us in no uncertain terms. I walked right along with him in the desolation of Yoknapatawpha County. And despite my reticence and my torment, I submerged without conscious thought, always led by my feelings. I felt forced by Faulkner's artistry to face a time of real racial prejudices, misogyny where the delusion of religion only deepened those terrible and fanatical hates of human over humans.
Christmas' destiny was set as he was born, no, as he was conceived. And with the rumors of his black blood, it was assured. 'He thought that it was loneliness which he was trying to escape and not himself.' He could not escape his ultimate end after being labeled a ‘white nigger’ or a ‘black with white skin,' from his orphanage years. Or from the first insult, Your little nigger bastard! Or from the man with cold eyes that took him, ‘I’ve no matter. I’ve no doubt the tyke will do. He’ll find no fancy food and no idleness’. Undoubtedly, he could not fight his fate; it seemed too much, so he appeared to have embraced it and incorporated his abhorrent mixed ancestry. His life encompassed all the sufferings of poor whites and disfavored blacks:
"He was sick after that. He did not know until then that there were white women who would take a man with a black skin. He stayed sick for two years. Sometimes he would remember how he had once tricked or teased white men into calling him a negro in order to fight them, to beat them or be beaten; now he fought the negro who called him white."
Had he ever had a chance? Could he have escaped his birth as an innocent baby? Was he ever innocent? I don’t know how to answer my own questions and simply have to keep reading.
"Then he was home again. Perhaps he expected to be punished upon his return, for what, what crime exactly, he did not expect to know, since he had already learned that, though children can accept adults as adults, adults can never accept children as anything but adults too."
But Christmas is not alone in his pain and his anguish. Almost as damned is dauntless Lena Grove, the pregnant woman that comes ‘all the way from Alabama a-walking’, searching for the father of her unborn child. All the time Faulkner’s prose catches by the gut and prevents us from abandoning his damned characters. But of her we could at least imagine that she had some say in where she ended up, for she opened the window herself:
"She had lived there eight years before she opened the window for the first time. She had not opened it a dozen times hardly before she discovered that she should not have opened it at all. She said to herself, ‘That’s just my luck.’"
But despite all her ignorance, she went after what she wanted and persevered despite the hardship she found on her way looking for Lucas Burch. Lucas Burch, or Joe Brown, as he is now known as here in Jefferson. Besides the guileless Lena and the no-good Brown, there is Byron Bunch that was doomed to fall in love with the wrong woman. 'He fell in love contrary to all the tradition of his austere and jealous country raising which demands in the object physical inviolability.' There is also the disgraced Reverend Gail Hightower, that after losing his Church survived by just watching as life passed him by outside his window; and his drama lies out there, 'it too might have grown up out of the tragic and inescapable earth along with the low spreading maples and the shrubs.' And at last, the murdered lady, Miss Burden; the mature lady that involved herself with the unfortunate Christmas. 'I reckon there are folks in this town will call it a judgment on her, even now. She is a Yankee. Her folks come down here in the Reconstruction, to stir up the niggers.' Even worst, 'they say she is still mixed up with niggers.'
All together this most memorable group forms the picture Faulkner is painting us. A picture of hate, sin, suffering, fate, desperation and injustice. And what did drifter Christmas do that could not be pardoned in this very southern village in an era of persecution and no compassion?
"He never acted like either a nigger or a white man. That was it. That was what made the folks so mad. For him to be a murderer and all dressed up and walking the town like he dared them to touch him, when he ought to have been skulking and hiding in the woods, muddy and dirty and running. It was like he never even knew he was a murderer, let alone a nigger too."
Thus, Faulkner translates to us the darkness of the human heart to warn about the dangers that expect around the corner if we unchecked, unsuspected, follow the dark that creeps deep in every man. As Faulkner paints to us, racism and misogyny often lead to the destruction of men and his home, and together they can destroy what humanity should represent.
All these conjectures aside, if you have not read Light in August yet, I highly recommend it, even as my heart is still settling down. At the same time, I have to advise you to prepare yourself for struggling with Faulkner’s group of characters in their doomed world. You will be enthralled by his captivating prose, but will not escape without shedding soulful tears.
___
August 5, 2025
I never dreamed that heaven could be a plowed field. Then, I saw these words on the back cover. "William Faulkner," it said "now leads a quiet, farming life." I like old editions. The dead live on in them. Either that or there is life after this one, in which case, Faulkner's heaven is already plowed. Rest, dear author. Your work is done. You broke the earth and nourish us still. Light in August left me humbled and full.
Praising a book with violent scenes is tricky. Consider them the roots in the soil. Gnarled and twisted as arthritic fingers, they grab at air. Frightening? Yes. Then, I remember the beauty of so many pages. They are up there with sonatas. The fingers play with the dexterity and endurance of a young Liszt. Here is one.
"She was in his mind so constantly that it was almost as if he were looking at her, there in the house, patient, waiting, inescapable, crazy. During the first phase it had been as though he were outside a house where snow was on the ground, trying to get into the house; during the second phase he was at the bottom of a pit in the hot wild darkness; now he was in the middle of a plain where there was no house, not even snow, not even wind."
And another.
"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."
Musical. Mournful. The writing pulls you into story and thought and through tunnels so dark that you will want to stop. Don't give up. Carry on reading. Follow Lena who has come "from Alabama: a fur piece. All the way from Alabama a-walking. . . ." Follow her into the light.
Praising a book with violent scenes is tricky. Consider them the roots in the soil. Gnarled and twisted as arthritic fingers, they grab at air. Frightening? Yes. Then, I remember the beauty of so many pages. They are up there with sonatas. The fingers play with the dexterity and endurance of a young Liszt. Here is one.
"She was in his mind so constantly that it was almost as if he were looking at her, there in the house, patient, waiting, inescapable, crazy. During the first phase it had been as though he were outside a house where snow was on the ground, trying to get into the house; during the second phase he was at the bottom of a pit in the hot wild darkness; now he was in the middle of a plain where there was no house, not even snow, not even wind."
And another.
"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."
Musical. Mournful. The writing pulls you into story and thought and through tunnels so dark that you will want to stop. Don't give up. Carry on reading. Follow Lena who has come "from Alabama: a fur piece. All the way from Alabama a-walking. . . ." Follow her into the light.
November 15, 2022
William Faulker, Light in August:"Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, 'I have come from Alabama, a fur piece.'"
Here Faulker presents Lena who has a passive role in Light in August as this phrase (sitting, watching, thinking) points out - she is not actually doing an action here other than a purely mental one. There is a lonely, languid feeling imparted by "watching the wagon mount the hill" that is shared with the wonderful title of the book. The southern drawl in "fur" and the reference to being far from Alabama, mark this book as one of the deep South, just as Faulkner himself. The phrase is slow and takes its time to build up, just as the structure of the book for which it is the opening phrase. There are a multitude of verbs in the phrase, but as I pointed out earlier, they are passive - in the book, there is actually quite a lot of action and violence, but it is described at a slow, deliberate pace throughout.
Light in August back in AP English was my first exposure to Faulkner and it was a mind-blower. His grandiose phrasing, the palpable violence and life in the characters, and the dark Southern gothic atmosphere mesmerized me. Although it was years before I returned to Faulkner, eventually reading nearly everything he wrote including the 2-volume biography by Joseph Blotner, Light in August had always held for me a high and exalted place in 20th C American literature and remains one of my all-time favourite books. Cover to cover, it is exquisitely wrought out of the mud of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi painfully depicting the entwined destinies of Lena Grove, Byron Burch, and Joe Christmas (what an extraordinary name for a character!). Equally impossible to forget is Faulkner's depiction of the preacher Gail Hightower - only rarely (Flannery O'Connor comes to mind - has anyone so vividly given a face as compelling and iconic to southern fundamentalism as this.
An absolute must-read especially if you are wishing to discover Faulkner.
Here Faulker presents Lena who has a passive role in Light in August as this phrase (sitting, watching, thinking) points out - she is not actually doing an action here other than a purely mental one. There is a lonely, languid feeling imparted by "watching the wagon mount the hill" that is shared with the wonderful title of the book. The southern drawl in "fur" and the reference to being far from Alabama, mark this book as one of the deep South, just as Faulkner himself. The phrase is slow and takes its time to build up, just as the structure of the book for which it is the opening phrase. There are a multitude of verbs in the phrase, but as I pointed out earlier, they are passive - in the book, there is actually quite a lot of action and violence, but it is described at a slow, deliberate pace throughout.
Light in August back in AP English was my first exposure to Faulkner and it was a mind-blower. His grandiose phrasing, the palpable violence and life in the characters, and the dark Southern gothic atmosphere mesmerized me. Although it was years before I returned to Faulkner, eventually reading nearly everything he wrote including the 2-volume biography by Joseph Blotner, Light in August had always held for me a high and exalted place in 20th C American literature and remains one of my all-time favourite books. Cover to cover, it is exquisitely wrought out of the mud of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi painfully depicting the entwined destinies of Lena Grove, Byron Burch, and Joe Christmas (what an extraordinary name for a character!). Equally impossible to forget is Faulkner's depiction of the preacher Gail Hightower - only rarely (Flannery O'Connor comes to mind - has anyone so vividly given a face as compelling and iconic to southern fundamentalism as this.
An absolute must-read especially if you are wishing to discover Faulkner.
August 5, 2025
The light in Mississippi, in this lovely late-summer month of August, is different. So, at least, one might conclude from hearing about the circumstances under which William Faulkner gave his epic 1932 novel the title Light in August. This grimly beautiful novel was originally to have the more prosaic title of Dark House; but Faulkner’s wife Estelle supposedly once commented about the light in August having a special quality in their part of north Mississippi, and thus Light in August was born.
Light in August is a multi-layered tragedy of life in the Jim Crow South, and at the same time it offers some unexpected notes of hope in the midst of its grimness. And above it all floats Faulkner’s supremely poetic voice, capturing as it does the musicality of Southern U.S. English.
Notes of hope in Light in August come from characters like Lena Grove and Byron Bunch – simple, fundamentally decent people who would never think of mistreating or deceiving others. As the novel begins, Lena, in an advanced stage of pregnancy, has traveled alone, all the way from Alabama to Faulkner’s imaginary home county of Yoknapatawpha and its county seat of Jefferson; when her lover, Lucas Burch, left her and lit out from Alabama, he claimed that he was going on ahead to set up a home for the two of them and their unborn child.
The more one learns about Lucas Burch, the more despicable Burch becomes, and the less likely it seems that Lena’s quest can possibly have a happy ending; but the integrity of Lena’s quest – “I reckon a family ought to be all together when a chap comes. Specially the first one. I reckon the Lord will see to that” (p. 21) – commands the reader’s respect. And when Lena meets Byron Bunch -- an ordinary working man who is so conscientious that, even when he's working weekends by himself at the mill, he marks off every single minute that he’s not actually at his work -- the reader begins to hope that the final outcome for Lena and her child may be something other than unhappy.
In the main, however, Light in August is the story of Joe Christmas, a grim and mysterious man who, from the moment of his arrival, is a loner and an outsider in Jefferson, just as he has always been in all of the many places where he has lived and worked throughout a restless life of rambling. It quickly emerges that the reason for Joe Christmas’s outsider status is the belief, held by Christmas himself and by many of the people in his life, that he is of mixed-race status. In Mississippi, historically a “one-drop” state where a single drop of black blood defined one as black and condemned one to second-class status, Christmas knows what a mixed-race heritage means in the South of his time; he broods on his ancestry, and on the mistreatment he has faced all his life.
In Jefferson, Christmas begins work at the planing mill, and establishes a bootlegging business; in a fateful and unfortunate decision, he takes on Lucas Burch, Lena’s unreliable ex-lover, as a business partner. His relationship with a prostitute who works in a brothel disguised as a restaurant ends unhappily; in a characteristic example of the cruelty that Christmas has experienced all his life, he is beaten by a mobster who says to his accomplices, “We’ll see if his blood is black” (p. 219).
And Christmas lives on the estate of, and eventually takes as a lover, one Joanna Burden, the descendant of Northern abolitionists, and therefore a lifelong pariah to white residents of Jefferson. Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden, both outsiders, begin a passionate affair; but the reader senses that this wild affair between these two unstable and haunted people can only end tragically. And it does end tragically – in two violent deaths, one of which is rendered by Faulkner with an extra touch of singular horror.
Also among the key characters of this novel is the Reverend Gail Hightower – a character through whom Faulkner has great fun lampooning the obsession of many white Southerners with the Civil War, the Confederacy, and the “Lost Cause.” Hightower’s fixation on the death of his grandfather, a Confederate cavalryman, during a Civil War engagement in Jefferson, caused him to pull every string and call in every favour he can, all to secure a Presbyterian parish in Jefferson. An outsider – like Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden – Hightower was a failure as a preacher, and as a husband, and he lost both his wife and his church. Yet he hangs on in Jefferson, forever wanting to retrace the path of his rebel grandfather – whose Civil War exploits, as the novel ultimately reveals, were anything but heroic.
One final word about the title. As quoted in scholar Hugh Ruppersburg’s book Reading Faulkner: Light in August, Faulkner evidently said that “. . .in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and – from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone. . .the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization.”
Maybe the light in August really is special in north Mississippi. I have traveled pretty widely in the Magnolia State, but have not yet been to Faulkner’s hometown of Oxford. Perhaps, in some future year, I will get the chance to visit Oxford in August – to walk the campus of the University of Mississippi, to try the barbecue at the Rib Cage, to visit Faulkner’s home at Rowan Oak (http://www.rowanoak.com) and see where he would tape pages from his manuscripts onto the walls as he worked to organize his amazingly complex novels. That will be a fine way to spend some future August.
Light in August is a multi-layered tragedy of life in the Jim Crow South, and at the same time it offers some unexpected notes of hope in the midst of its grimness. And above it all floats Faulkner’s supremely poetic voice, capturing as it does the musicality of Southern U.S. English.
Notes of hope in Light in August come from characters like Lena Grove and Byron Bunch – simple, fundamentally decent people who would never think of mistreating or deceiving others. As the novel begins, Lena, in an advanced stage of pregnancy, has traveled alone, all the way from Alabama to Faulkner’s imaginary home county of Yoknapatawpha and its county seat of Jefferson; when her lover, Lucas Burch, left her and lit out from Alabama, he claimed that he was going on ahead to set up a home for the two of them and their unborn child.
The more one learns about Lucas Burch, the more despicable Burch becomes, and the less likely it seems that Lena’s quest can possibly have a happy ending; but the integrity of Lena’s quest – “I reckon a family ought to be all together when a chap comes. Specially the first one. I reckon the Lord will see to that” (p. 21) – commands the reader’s respect. And when Lena meets Byron Bunch -- an ordinary working man who is so conscientious that, even when he's working weekends by himself at the mill, he marks off every single minute that he’s not actually at his work -- the reader begins to hope that the final outcome for Lena and her child may be something other than unhappy.
In the main, however, Light in August is the story of Joe Christmas, a grim and mysterious man who, from the moment of his arrival, is a loner and an outsider in Jefferson, just as he has always been in all of the many places where he has lived and worked throughout a restless life of rambling. It quickly emerges that the reason for Joe Christmas’s outsider status is the belief, held by Christmas himself and by many of the people in his life, that he is of mixed-race status. In Mississippi, historically a “one-drop” state where a single drop of black blood defined one as black and condemned one to second-class status, Christmas knows what a mixed-race heritage means in the South of his time; he broods on his ancestry, and on the mistreatment he has faced all his life.
In Jefferson, Christmas begins work at the planing mill, and establishes a bootlegging business; in a fateful and unfortunate decision, he takes on Lucas Burch, Lena’s unreliable ex-lover, as a business partner. His relationship with a prostitute who works in a brothel disguised as a restaurant ends unhappily; in a characteristic example of the cruelty that Christmas has experienced all his life, he is beaten by a mobster who says to his accomplices, “We’ll see if his blood is black” (p. 219).
And Christmas lives on the estate of, and eventually takes as a lover, one Joanna Burden, the descendant of Northern abolitionists, and therefore a lifelong pariah to white residents of Jefferson. Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden, both outsiders, begin a passionate affair; but the reader senses that this wild affair between these two unstable and haunted people can only end tragically. And it does end tragically – in two violent deaths, one of which is rendered by Faulkner with an extra touch of singular horror.
Also among the key characters of this novel is the Reverend Gail Hightower – a character through whom Faulkner has great fun lampooning the obsession of many white Southerners with the Civil War, the Confederacy, and the “Lost Cause.” Hightower’s fixation on the death of his grandfather, a Confederate cavalryman, during a Civil War engagement in Jefferson, caused him to pull every string and call in every favour he can, all to secure a Presbyterian parish in Jefferson. An outsider – like Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden – Hightower was a failure as a preacher, and as a husband, and he lost both his wife and his church. Yet he hangs on in Jefferson, forever wanting to retrace the path of his rebel grandfather – whose Civil War exploits, as the novel ultimately reveals, were anything but heroic.
One final word about the title. As quoted in scholar Hugh Ruppersburg’s book Reading Faulkner: Light in August, Faulkner evidently said that “. . .in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and – from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone. . .the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization.”
Maybe the light in August really is special in north Mississippi. I have traveled pretty widely in the Magnolia State, but have not yet been to Faulkner’s hometown of Oxford. Perhaps, in some future year, I will get the chance to visit Oxford in August – to walk the campus of the University of Mississippi, to try the barbecue at the Rib Cage, to visit Faulkner’s home at Rowan Oak (http://www.rowanoak.com) and see where he would tape pages from his manuscripts onto the walls as he worked to organize his amazingly complex novels. That will be a fine way to spend some future August.
October 5, 2015
Words. That stew in silent torment, weep and curse, howl in pain and outrage. Words that spill from his pen and bleed on to these white sheets to taint our neat black-and-white categorizations. Universes stretch across the extremities of his fictional Jefferson, that swallow lives whole and spit back all the folly men and women are capable of. And images emerge in an unearthly chiaroscuro of mortal agony and transient joy. Colours of spiritual disquiet and alienation and uncertain footsteps towards expiation daubed on to the empty canvas of Yoknapatawpha.
Words. That sing to the tune of all human frailty with nary a care for readerly reception. Words that neither bristle with indignation nor rage against injustice but flay open the heartbreak of it all. The colossal human tragedy shorn of its sheen of grandiosity.
Words. That do not merely align themselves in imperfect harmony to proudly proclaim artistic triumph but are wholly in communion with a sense of time and place. Words brimming over with an abiding tenderness even when they speak of such disconcerting cruelty. Race and gender and religious dogma segue into each other, but it is not just the deep south that is reconstructed from this thematic patchwork but a panoramic view of all human vulnerability. These are words that serenade endurance in the face of inescapable defeat. Words birthing an opera of anguished voices asking for reprieve, for redemption.
Words. That forgive the sins of the doomed, the exiled, and the dispossessed of the earth and the ones who are shrunken under the weight of history. They are filled with hope in the August of their lives, all of a sudden, these broken beings. Hope of surviving decay and flowing into a future which has already severed all ties with them.
Light arcs into this dreary abyss occasionally. Light that flickers and wavers and fuels anticipation. The light of new life that begets optimism in turn. Who knows if it will purge the darkness of it all? But it may.
William Faulkner's soulful, mystical words whisper into the ears of eternity this dubious message of renewal amidst degeneration.
Words. That sing to the tune of all human frailty with nary a care for readerly reception. Words that neither bristle with indignation nor rage against injustice but flay open the heartbreak of it all. The colossal human tragedy shorn of its sheen of grandiosity.
Now it was still, quiet, the fecund earth now coolly suspirant. The dark was filled with voices, myriad, out of all time that he had known, as though all the past was a flat pattern. And going on: tomorrow night, all the tomorrows, to be a part of the flat pattern, going on. He thought of that with quiet astonishment: going on, myriad, familiar, since all that had ever been was the same as all that was to be, since tomorrow to-be and had-been would be the same. Then it was time.
Words. That do not merely align themselves in imperfect harmony to proudly proclaim artistic triumph but are wholly in communion with a sense of time and place. Words brimming over with an abiding tenderness even when they speak of such disconcerting cruelty. Race and gender and religious dogma segue into each other, but it is not just the deep south that is reconstructed from this thematic patchwork but a panoramic view of all human vulnerability. These are words that serenade endurance in the face of inescapable defeat. Words birthing an opera of anguished voices asking for reprieve, for redemption.
But there was too much running with him, stride for stride with him. Not pursuers: but himself: years, acts, deeds omitted and committed, keeping pace with him, stride for stride, breath for breath, thud for thud of the heart, using a single heart.
Words. That forgive the sins of the doomed, the exiled, and the dispossessed of the earth and the ones who are shrunken under the weight of history. They are filled with hope in the August of their lives, all of a sudden, these broken beings. Hope of surviving decay and flowing into a future which has already severed all ties with them.
...now and at last they had all played out the parts which had been allotted them and now they could live quietly with one another.
Light arcs into this dreary abyss occasionally. Light that flickers and wavers and fuels anticipation. The light of new life that begets optimism in turn. Who knows if it will purge the darkness of it all? But it may.
William Faulkner's soulful, mystical words whisper into the ears of eternity this dubious message of renewal amidst degeneration.
January 6, 2009
A couple of thoughts I’ll tie together: 1) I read a BBC article that suggests a large percentage of people keep books on their shelf to impress others rather than to read them. 2) As young students, teachers take us to the library and allow us to pick out whatever book we like (as long as we’re not just trying to avoid reading by picking out a pamphlet), but by the time we reach high school and college, it’s assigned. Though I believe an educator’s recommendation to be valuable, I believe taking away a person’s choice can rob them of finding the book that will spark excitement and turn them into readers for life. I believe far too many people are forced to read classics, when quite frankly, some of them will never be appealing. For me, I usually have strong reactions, good or bad, to the classics, but I found my spark long ago. For most people though, they know that reading is an intelligent practice, but they’re bored by what they’ve been forced to read, so books are used for the perception they create rather than the pleasure of their contents. While some of it is taste and a blatant unwillingness to participate in any medium straying from the instant gratification culture, there are certainly a good number of masturbatory authors who are more concerned with coming off as intelligent rather than relatable.
I believe William Faulkner is one of those writers who lets his writing get in the way of a good story.
Published in 1932, Light in August is written in the Southern Gothic tradition—set in Faulkner’s fictional Mississippi county, Yoknapatawpha county—where the grotesque is often perpetrated by horror/romance archetypes without moral judgment from the author. The plot consists of three connected strands: 1) A pregnant woman, Lena Grove, in search of the father of her baby; 2) An enigmatic alcohol smuggler, Joe Christmas, struggling with his mixed ancestry; and 3) A disgraced Priest, Reverend Gail Hightower, who lives in near-isolation after annoying the town with his sermons about his dead grandfather. Much of the novel deals with the racism of the South, pulling in violence and observing Judeo-Christian values if they were smashed into a funhouse mirror. It takes a little while to find Faulkner’s rhythm, but it’s not a tough search and it’s enjoyable until you realize he won’t just tell the story. The reader gets dragged through lengthy flashbacks even though the compelling plot line just found its adrenaline. Then you’ll get to the part you’ve been waiting for and Faulkner will skip ahead, spoiling his own story then slowly backing through the incident without any of the tension.
There are obscure punctuation choices, too, and while it’s not a major point of contention, it illustrates my frustration with his style: He uses six ellipses (. . . . . .) when the standard three (…) will do. The second quarter of this book, about 150 pages, could have easily been trimmed back to a lean 30, and even though I liked the last chapter, at least 40 of the pages before that could have been cut out, too, but that’s not Faulkner’s style. He believes in stream of consciousness, where thoughts expand and ideas ramble so that you understand the deepest recesses of a character. While this has certain strengths—as each character gets presented in differing ways, depending on who’s viewing them—I still find the style obese and much of the information superfluous. I lean minimalistic by default (though even I like a little meat on the bone), so I’m not a fan of reading what I think a visceral editor should have cut. Nothing seems to be minor in Faulkner’s eyes. As a result, none of the characters feel all that major either. They’re unique, distinguished, but with everything else, there’s just too much to appreciate it. It’s like mixing all the beautiful colors. After a while, you just end up with brown. Sometimes you need to make choices and Faulkner doesn’t make enough for my liking. As a result, any other book of his will not come onto my shelf. I don’t care who thinks I look smart. Two stars. Barely.
I believe William Faulkner is one of those writers who lets his writing get in the way of a good story.
Published in 1932, Light in August is written in the Southern Gothic tradition—set in Faulkner’s fictional Mississippi county, Yoknapatawpha county—where the grotesque is often perpetrated by horror/romance archetypes without moral judgment from the author. The plot consists of three connected strands: 1) A pregnant woman, Lena Grove, in search of the father of her baby; 2) An enigmatic alcohol smuggler, Joe Christmas, struggling with his mixed ancestry; and 3) A disgraced Priest, Reverend Gail Hightower, who lives in near-isolation after annoying the town with his sermons about his dead grandfather. Much of the novel deals with the racism of the South, pulling in violence and observing Judeo-Christian values if they were smashed into a funhouse mirror. It takes a little while to find Faulkner’s rhythm, but it’s not a tough search and it’s enjoyable until you realize he won’t just tell the story. The reader gets dragged through lengthy flashbacks even though the compelling plot line just found its adrenaline. Then you’ll get to the part you’ve been waiting for and Faulkner will skip ahead, spoiling his own story then slowly backing through the incident without any of the tension.
There are obscure punctuation choices, too, and while it’s not a major point of contention, it illustrates my frustration with his style: He uses six ellipses (. . . . . .) when the standard three (…) will do. The second quarter of this book, about 150 pages, could have easily been trimmed back to a lean 30, and even though I liked the last chapter, at least 40 of the pages before that could have been cut out, too, but that’s not Faulkner’s style. He believes in stream of consciousness, where thoughts expand and ideas ramble so that you understand the deepest recesses of a character. While this has certain strengths—as each character gets presented in differing ways, depending on who’s viewing them—I still find the style obese and much of the information superfluous. I lean minimalistic by default (though even I like a little meat on the bone), so I’m not a fan of reading what I think a visceral editor should have cut. Nothing seems to be minor in Faulkner’s eyes. As a result, none of the characters feel all that major either. They’re unique, distinguished, but with everything else, there’s just too much to appreciate it. It’s like mixing all the beautiful colors. After a while, you just end up with brown. Sometimes you need to make choices and Faulkner doesn’t make enough for my liking. As a result, any other book of his will not come onto my shelf. I don’t care who thinks I look smart. Two stars. Barely.
April 8, 2020
“El hombre realiza, engendra más de lo que puede o de lo que debería soportar. Así es como descubre que puede soportarlo todo. Eso es lo terrible, el hecho de que pueda soportarlo todo, todo.”
William Faulkner, premio Nobel de literatura en 1949, es uno de los grandes escritores que definieron el siglo XX. Dueño de una prosa compacta, extremadamente convincente y maravillosa nos ha legado grandes títulos como “El ruido y la furia”, “¡Absalón, Absalón!”, “Mientras agonizo”, “Santuario”, este, una gran cantidad de cuentos, ensayos y obras teatrales.
Logró ejercer gran influencia en las tempranas novelas de Gabriel García Márquez y en otros escritores latinoamericanos como Mario Vargas Llosa e inclusive en Juan Carlos Onetti, Roa Bastos y Juan Rulfo.
Yo solo había leído su magistral y revolucionaria novela “El ruido y la furia” y pude descubrir su talento narrativo, ese que lo definió como un escritor distinto y original.
En “Luz de agosto” me encuentro con una novela que posee una historia fuerte, cimentada en la base de cuatro personajes bien marcados a partir de los cuales se entreteje la trama y que se posiciona en el pueblo de Jefferson, en el sur de los Estados Unidos.
Naturalmente, una historia ambientada en esa zona y en las primeras décadas del siglo XX obviamente involucrará un aliciente clave en todo esto: el del racismo.
Todo el libro está plagado de frases violentas contra los negros, pero en las que el autor se hace un lado (y seguramente no compartía), tanto en las situaciones involucran al personaje principal, Joe Christmas, de sus vicisitudes e historia de vida como en otros momentos en que personajes de piel negra están involucrados en algo.
La esclavitud está abolida en el condado, pero la mentalidad de muchos sigue siendo esclavista y lo que sucede es justamente una exteriorización de modo de trato hacia los negros.
Algo similar sucede con la religión, el sexo y las distintas miradas cuando se aborda el tema en muchos pasajes del libro. Es un tema que sigue siendo tabú, genera atracción y rechazo al mismo tiempo, especialmente si tenemos en cuenta que Faulkner escribió este libro en 1932.
Es natural que en esa época tan convulsionada se dieran ese tipo de situaciones. Lo que realmente es de destacar es la manera en que Faulkner maneja esas cuestiones. En ningún momento se torna racista, más allá de los personajes del libro. Está claro que como autor quiere contar cómo era esa época y cuán difícil era vivir en los estados del sur de su país, donde la segregación racial era total.
Más particularmente se da en Christmas, dado que es un hombre blanco con sangre negra en sus venas, lo que conocemos como un mestizo y que por ende puede tanto actuar como blanco pero también reaccionar como negro. Christmas es una contradicción andante y no encaja nunca en el entorno de Jefferson.
Indudablemente es un hombre en busca de una identidad que nunca encuentra, que está difusa y que no logra asimilar para alejar los fantasmas de la férrea crianza durante su niñez. Es un hombre que busca equivocadamente un lugar en el mundo y que probablemente no logre llegar a buen puerto. Su vida está en suspenso y está apuntalada por la violencia con que es tratado constantemente.
Otro punto realmente admirable está en los distintos tipos de estilos narrativos que utiliza el autor. Desde el estilo indirecto libre, la interpolación en cursiva de los pensamientos del personaje hasta la técnica del monólogo interior. Todas las formas posible son puestas en uso en el texto para contarnos la historia. Dicen que Faulkner, para “El ruido y la furia” llegó a pedirle al editor que utilizara distintos colores de tinta para identificar cada estilo narrativo, lo cual le fue rechazado.
Es evidente que era un escritor no convencional que ponía en juego todos sus conocimientos técnicos para elaborar sus novelas y fueron estos conocimientos lo que lo hicieron famoso.
La novela, que comienza con lo que el narrador omnisciente cuenta de Lena Grove y de su llegada desde Alabama, caminando con un embarazo avanzado hasta Jefferson (que forma parte del ficticio condado de Yoknapatawpha creado por Faulkner) en busca de un tal Lucas Burch al que luego conoceremos como Joe Brown y en donde se entrelazan los sucesos con los demás personajes principales, desde Byron Bunch, que se involucra sentimentalmente con ella, hasta el reverendo Hightower, un sacerdote que ha dejado los hábitos y que es uno de los personajes más interesante, especialmente por su introspección psicológica hasta desembocar en la historia de Joe Christmas y es a partir de él donde gira absolutamente toda la novela.
En el caso de Joe Brown nos encontramos con un personaje movido por la ambición y el instinto de control sobre los demás. Sus enfrentamientos con Byron Bunch son verdaderas batallas que van de lo psicológico a lo físico.
En adición a todo esto, Faulkner utiliza la inclusión de giros temporales, yendo atrás en el tiempo y volviendo al presente todas las veces que considere necesario para que el lector conozca a todos los personajes que rodean a Joe Christmas, como lo son Doc Hines y su esposa, Joana Burden o el señor McEachern, solo por nombrar algunos.
Tal vez, Faulkner haya plasmado un contrapunto entre el bien (Lena) y el mal (Christmas). Las acciones de cada uno mandan en la historia y estos personajes intentan a su modo limpiar su imagen o corregir sus errores. Lo que destaca en “Luz de agosto” esa esa constante sensación de vileza que se encuentra latente en el ser humano y en cómo a veces intentamos imponer nuestros principios sobre los otros aún estando equivocados.
Faulkner mantiene el ritmo de la historia sobre la base de una narración extremadamente compacta, un tanto barroca a veces y cargada de descripciones interminables pero con la solvencia justa para lograr que nada en la historia quede como cabo suelto.
El personaje de Joe Christmas está tan bien logrado, tan matizado de todas las contradicciones que nos rodean, que logra que por momentos comprendamos su sufrimientos, mientras que en otro intentemos condenarlo por sus acciones.
Luego de terminar este libro, me llevo el convencimiento de la grandeza de William Faulkner, de su calidad para escribir novelas sin fisuras, claras, por momentos subyugantemente poética y con la adición de poner en el tapete el tratamiento de situaciones humanas o sociales veraderamente controversiales.
El hecho de comenzar y cerrar la novela con Lena Grove, con el intermedio de todo lo que le sucede a Joe Christmas nos da la idea de una novela elíptica, cerrada y prácticamente perfecta.
De esas novelas que William Faulkner acostumbraba escribir.
William Faulkner, premio Nobel de literatura en 1949, es uno de los grandes escritores que definieron el siglo XX. Dueño de una prosa compacta, extremadamente convincente y maravillosa nos ha legado grandes títulos como “El ruido y la furia”, “¡Absalón, Absalón!”, “Mientras agonizo”, “Santuario”, este, una gran cantidad de cuentos, ensayos y obras teatrales.
Logró ejercer gran influencia en las tempranas novelas de Gabriel García Márquez y en otros escritores latinoamericanos como Mario Vargas Llosa e inclusive en Juan Carlos Onetti, Roa Bastos y Juan Rulfo.
Yo solo había leído su magistral y revolucionaria novela “El ruido y la furia” y pude descubrir su talento narrativo, ese que lo definió como un escritor distinto y original.
En “Luz de agosto” me encuentro con una novela que posee una historia fuerte, cimentada en la base de cuatro personajes bien marcados a partir de los cuales se entreteje la trama y que se posiciona en el pueblo de Jefferson, en el sur de los Estados Unidos.
Naturalmente, una historia ambientada en esa zona y en las primeras décadas del siglo XX obviamente involucrará un aliciente clave en todo esto: el del racismo.
Todo el libro está plagado de frases violentas contra los negros, pero en las que el autor se hace un lado (y seguramente no compartía), tanto en las situaciones involucran al personaje principal, Joe Christmas, de sus vicisitudes e historia de vida como en otros momentos en que personajes de piel negra están involucrados en algo.
La esclavitud está abolida en el condado, pero la mentalidad de muchos sigue siendo esclavista y lo que sucede es justamente una exteriorización de modo de trato hacia los negros.
Algo similar sucede con la religión, el sexo y las distintas miradas cuando se aborda el tema en muchos pasajes del libro. Es un tema que sigue siendo tabú, genera atracción y rechazo al mismo tiempo, especialmente si tenemos en cuenta que Faulkner escribió este libro en 1932.
Es natural que en esa época tan convulsionada se dieran ese tipo de situaciones. Lo que realmente es de destacar es la manera en que Faulkner maneja esas cuestiones. En ningún momento se torna racista, más allá de los personajes del libro. Está claro que como autor quiere contar cómo era esa época y cuán difícil era vivir en los estados del sur de su país, donde la segregación racial era total.
Más particularmente se da en Christmas, dado que es un hombre blanco con sangre negra en sus venas, lo que conocemos como un mestizo y que por ende puede tanto actuar como blanco pero también reaccionar como negro. Christmas es una contradicción andante y no encaja nunca en el entorno de Jefferson.
Indudablemente es un hombre en busca de una identidad que nunca encuentra, que está difusa y que no logra asimilar para alejar los fantasmas de la férrea crianza durante su niñez. Es un hombre que busca equivocadamente un lugar en el mundo y que probablemente no logre llegar a buen puerto. Su vida está en suspenso y está apuntalada por la violencia con que es tratado constantemente.
Otro punto realmente admirable está en los distintos tipos de estilos narrativos que utiliza el autor. Desde el estilo indirecto libre, la interpolación en cursiva de los pensamientos del personaje hasta la técnica del monólogo interior. Todas las formas posible son puestas en uso en el texto para contarnos la historia. Dicen que Faulkner, para “El ruido y la furia” llegó a pedirle al editor que utilizara distintos colores de tinta para identificar cada estilo narrativo, lo cual le fue rechazado.
Es evidente que era un escritor no convencional que ponía en juego todos sus conocimientos técnicos para elaborar sus novelas y fueron estos conocimientos lo que lo hicieron famoso.
La novela, que comienza con lo que el narrador omnisciente cuenta de Lena Grove y de su llegada desde Alabama, caminando con un embarazo avanzado hasta Jefferson (que forma parte del ficticio condado de Yoknapatawpha creado por Faulkner) en busca de un tal Lucas Burch al que luego conoceremos como Joe Brown y en donde se entrelazan los sucesos con los demás personajes principales, desde Byron Bunch, que se involucra sentimentalmente con ella, hasta el reverendo Hightower, un sacerdote que ha dejado los hábitos y que es uno de los personajes más interesante, especialmente por su introspección psicológica hasta desembocar en la historia de Joe Christmas y es a partir de él donde gira absolutamente toda la novela.
En el caso de Joe Brown nos encontramos con un personaje movido por la ambición y el instinto de control sobre los demás. Sus enfrentamientos con Byron Bunch son verdaderas batallas que van de lo psicológico a lo físico.
En adición a todo esto, Faulkner utiliza la inclusión de giros temporales, yendo atrás en el tiempo y volviendo al presente todas las veces que considere necesario para que el lector conozca a todos los personajes que rodean a Joe Christmas, como lo son Doc Hines y su esposa, Joana Burden o el señor McEachern, solo por nombrar algunos.
Tal vez, Faulkner haya plasmado un contrapunto entre el bien (Lena) y el mal (Christmas). Las acciones de cada uno mandan en la historia y estos personajes intentan a su modo limpiar su imagen o corregir sus errores. Lo que destaca en “Luz de agosto” esa esa constante sensación de vileza que se encuentra latente en el ser humano y en cómo a veces intentamos imponer nuestros principios sobre los otros aún estando equivocados.
Faulkner mantiene el ritmo de la historia sobre la base de una narración extremadamente compacta, un tanto barroca a veces y cargada de descripciones interminables pero con la solvencia justa para lograr que nada en la historia quede como cabo suelto.
El personaje de Joe Christmas está tan bien logrado, tan matizado de todas las contradicciones que nos rodean, que logra que por momentos comprendamos su sufrimientos, mientras que en otro intentemos condenarlo por sus acciones.
Luego de terminar este libro, me llevo el convencimiento de la grandeza de William Faulkner, de su calidad para escribir novelas sin fisuras, claras, por momentos subyugantemente poética y con la adición de poner en el tapete el tratamiento de situaciones humanas o sociales veraderamente controversiales.
El hecho de comenzar y cerrar la novela con Lena Grove, con el intermedio de todo lo que le sucede a Joe Christmas nos da la idea de una novela elíptica, cerrada y prácticamente perfecta.
De esas novelas que William Faulkner acostumbraba escribir.
September 17, 2016
A dark and compelling slice of Southern Gothic with a prose which is easily recognisable as 'Faulkneresque' that showcases his ability to write about the awful deep south at a time of serious racial prejudice, misogyny and the preaching of religion through the eyes of both men of the cloth and those who are deluded and fanatical. Featuring some of Faulkner's most memorable characters including the dauntless Lena Grove searching for the father of her unborn child, Reverend Hightower who is dealing with many issues to do with faith and morality and the enigmatic drifter Joe Christmas where he is consumed with inner turmoil and evil minded thoughts all tied in with feelings for his mixed ancestry. The narrative skips around between different characters and time zones making you really think about what is there in front of you, and there is no plot as such just interlinked small stories that tie off violently towards it's climax. But it's not long into proceedings that he spells out quite clearly just where and when we are, with dialogue containing the 'N' word on a scale that is both shocking and sadly all too realistic of this time, it's here that Faulkner is a master at creating a truly harsh and unforgettable world, certainly deliberately so, though I am not entirely sure that he fully meant it to be this way, all the folk that are presented before us seem like both victim and victimizer, unsympathetic and at a loss with life. Even after all the sad and tragic events play out we are only really left with semi-hope for a brighter future.
October 14, 2021
Perhaps Faulkner’s most ambitious work.
No doubt William Faulkner, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and twice the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and one of the preeminent American writers of twentieth century, wrote with a certain swaggering aspiration anyway, being a frequent experimenter of narrative technique and style.
His 1932 publication, before his talent and reputation had matured, was one in which he had some difficulty getting favorably received by publishers. The book sales were moderately successful and initial critical were mixed. However, over time, this has come to be seen as one of his most important works and in 1998, the Modern Library ranked Light in August 54th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Additionally, Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Exploring themes of alienation, isolation, social ostracism, racism, sexism, class and religion, and creating in the text an oblique Christian allegory, Faulkner has here crafted one of his most captivating novels.
While Faulkner populates his story with a plethora of fascinating players and sets his narrative in his Yoknapatawpha County, there are three central protagonists: Lena Grove, Joe Christmas and Gail Hightower. All three represent victims of racism and / or class ostracism, as well as hypocritical ideals of gender roles, propriety and religious dogma. These three, as well as some minor characters, are cast out from polite society and dwell on the fringe, in the hinterland of established civilization yet all three, each in their way, demonstrate dignity and grace.
Lena, a very pregnant teenage girl from Alabama, walks, WALKS, into town looking for the man who, in the parlance of that time, “got her into trouble”. Faulkner’s Lena is similar to Dewey Dell from As I Lay Dying, in that she represents not just a girl destined to become pregnant and have children, but also the representation of the harsh results of social and religious ostracization of the time. Lena gets treated better by men than she does an ostensibly more sympathetic population of women, who seem to see in her a fallen element, a wayward girl unrepentant and one not deserving of sympathy. While Faulkner does describe some grudging care for her, the overall impression of her is one of quiet grace under pressure.
The most compelling character of the book is without a doubt Joe Christmas, and roughly half the text is devoted to an examination of him and his background. Joe was found as a newborn infant at an orphanage in Memphis. While he appears white, it is presumed, and later confirmed, that at least some of his heritage is African. This belief has cause for Christmas, throughout his life, to be an outcast and his ethos is one of alienation and a reckless antipathy for the society who rejects him. Much has been made of him as a Christ figure in Faulkner’s subtle Christian allegory here, and I can see the traces of Faulkner’s craft as there are several elements of the comparison that are readily identifiable. However, Christmas is a violent man, a thief and murderer, who nonetheless seems to want to be caught for his crimes. In the sense that Christ was holy, which literally translates into “apart” or “separate” he can be seen in this light. While Joe is the most obvious element of Faulkner’s Christian reference, Lena can also be seen as a Mary figure and the minor figure Byron could be seen as a Joseph figure. In the sense that these characters are typically Faulkneresque and have violent natures or those contrary to a more orthodox parallel to biblical themes, his allegory could be seen in the light of repudiation or even a dark satire.
Gail Hightower is an old man living on the outskirts of town who had once been a respected pastor in one of the town churches. He was cast out after a scandal involving his wife and rather than leave town, as he was first invited and later forcibly compelled to, he has stayed to become a pariah, and an oddly redemptive figure towards the end.
Memphis.
The southwestern Tennessee city, some eighty miles north of Jefferson (Oxford Mississippi) has become in Faulkner’s canon a site of violence and debauchery. Here too, Faulkner’s depiction of the city is one of Sodom and Gomorrah if we are to follow the tones of his Christian allegory.
Correctly labeled as a Southern Gothic novel, this has most of the usual themes in Faulkner’s work and could be seen as one of his greatest novels. While it lacks the stream of consciousness narration as in The Sound and the Fury, it is like much of his other work in that it is a dark, murky recitation and asks much of the reader. Ultimately, especially in Lena, Faulkner depicts a scene of hope and perseverance beyond and in spite of castigation.
No doubt William Faulkner, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and twice the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and one of the preeminent American writers of twentieth century, wrote with a certain swaggering aspiration anyway, being a frequent experimenter of narrative technique and style.
His 1932 publication, before his talent and reputation had matured, was one in which he had some difficulty getting favorably received by publishers. The book sales were moderately successful and initial critical were mixed. However, over time, this has come to be seen as one of his most important works and in 1998, the Modern Library ranked Light in August 54th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Additionally, Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Exploring themes of alienation, isolation, social ostracism, racism, sexism, class and religion, and creating in the text an oblique Christian allegory, Faulkner has here crafted one of his most captivating novels.
While Faulkner populates his story with a plethora of fascinating players and sets his narrative in his Yoknapatawpha County, there are three central protagonists: Lena Grove, Joe Christmas and Gail Hightower. All three represent victims of racism and / or class ostracism, as well as hypocritical ideals of gender roles, propriety and religious dogma. These three, as well as some minor characters, are cast out from polite society and dwell on the fringe, in the hinterland of established civilization yet all three, each in their way, demonstrate dignity and grace.
Lena, a very pregnant teenage girl from Alabama, walks, WALKS, into town looking for the man who, in the parlance of that time, “got her into trouble”. Faulkner’s Lena is similar to Dewey Dell from As I Lay Dying, in that she represents not just a girl destined to become pregnant and have children, but also the representation of the harsh results of social and religious ostracization of the time. Lena gets treated better by men than she does an ostensibly more sympathetic population of women, who seem to see in her a fallen element, a wayward girl unrepentant and one not deserving of sympathy. While Faulkner does describe some grudging care for her, the overall impression of her is one of quiet grace under pressure.
The most compelling character of the book is without a doubt Joe Christmas, and roughly half the text is devoted to an examination of him and his background. Joe was found as a newborn infant at an orphanage in Memphis. While he appears white, it is presumed, and later confirmed, that at least some of his heritage is African. This belief has cause for Christmas, throughout his life, to be an outcast and his ethos is one of alienation and a reckless antipathy for the society who rejects him. Much has been made of him as a Christ figure in Faulkner’s subtle Christian allegory here, and I can see the traces of Faulkner’s craft as there are several elements of the comparison that are readily identifiable. However, Christmas is a violent man, a thief and murderer, who nonetheless seems to want to be caught for his crimes. In the sense that Christ was holy, which literally translates into “apart” or “separate” he can be seen in this light. While Joe is the most obvious element of Faulkner’s Christian reference, Lena can also be seen as a Mary figure and the minor figure Byron could be seen as a Joseph figure. In the sense that these characters are typically Faulkneresque and have violent natures or those contrary to a more orthodox parallel to biblical themes, his allegory could be seen in the light of repudiation or even a dark satire.
Gail Hightower is an old man living on the outskirts of town who had once been a respected pastor in one of the town churches. He was cast out after a scandal involving his wife and rather than leave town, as he was first invited and later forcibly compelled to, he has stayed to become a pariah, and an oddly redemptive figure towards the end.
Memphis.
The southwestern Tennessee city, some eighty miles north of Jefferson (Oxford Mississippi) has become in Faulkner’s canon a site of violence and debauchery. Here too, Faulkner’s depiction of the city is one of Sodom and Gomorrah if we are to follow the tones of his Christian allegory.
Correctly labeled as a Southern Gothic novel, this has most of the usual themes in Faulkner’s work and could be seen as one of his greatest novels. While it lacks the stream of consciousness narration as in The Sound and the Fury, it is like much of his other work in that it is a dark, murky recitation and asks much of the reader. Ultimately, especially in Lena, Faulkner depicts a scene of hope and perseverance beyond and in spite of castigation.
June 3, 2019
After some 45+ years, I have finally read Light in August again. What amazes me is how little beyond the basic character details I remembered. I also increasingly believe that I read Faulkner better with more life experience than I did when younger. I have been finding that true with many classics.
As for the novel itself, I don’t plan a lengthy review. I have noted many sections I like using status updates (such a great way to sneak in a lot of quotations). Essentially this novel is many lives coming full circle, it is the experience of subtle and exaggerated racism, a South that can’t let go of its Confederate past (which hardly seems past), of sectionalism which will not permit newcomers from “other”, northern, territories, of the continuing struggle of men and women (strength vs nurture perhaps). So many things here. My favorite section kept changing as I read but, in the end, I think it is Gail Hightower’s discovery of self near the end of the novel. Such a painful self-correction.
Now that I have re-read Light in August it is returned to its secure place among my favorites of Faulkner’s novels.
..................................................................................
My prior rating was 5*. I did my college thesis on characters from this book and how the language used to describe each reflected each person's character. I was amazed that this worked and have always wondered if authors work at this or do it unconsciously. I haven’t read this book since those college days and it is long overdue for this re-read.
As for the novel itself, I don’t plan a lengthy review. I have noted many sections I like using status updates (such a great way to sneak in a lot of quotations). Essentially this novel is many lives coming full circle, it is the experience of subtle and exaggerated racism, a South that can’t let go of its Confederate past (which hardly seems past), of sectionalism which will not permit newcomers from “other”, northern, territories, of the continuing struggle of men and women (strength vs nurture perhaps). So many things here. My favorite section kept changing as I read but, in the end, I think it is Gail Hightower’s discovery of self near the end of the novel. Such a painful self-correction.
Now that I have re-read Light in August it is returned to its secure place among my favorites of Faulkner’s novels.
..................................................................................
My prior rating was 5*. I did my college thesis on characters from this book and how the language used to describe each reflected each person's character. I was amazed that this worked and have always wondered if authors work at this or do it unconsciously. I haven’t read this book since those college days and it is long overdue for this re-read.
November 4, 2015
You’re an American author, dead almost half a century, and there’s this thing called television and a host(ess?) talking about books with half the population of a country you once inhabited, you’re on the list and why? Race.
I really hate the term Great American Novel, how we capitalize it in the middle of sentences (GAN, anyone?) and talk about examples of it with reverence. It’s a questing beast for authors that strive for it and an oddity for those who write something that receives the tag . Through the years when I’ve heard “Faulkner” and Light in August there’s a downbeat before someone brings out the big GANs and people nod appreciatively. I’ve not looked up whatever passes for a definition of the GAN, but I’ll take this as my personal one: a novel that describes an immutable trait of what it is to be American. Technological advances be damned, there are things that are going to seemingly always remain the same. Our miserable, never-ending racial inequalities and frustrations line our cultural fabric like toxins. So to Faulkner I tip my hat for writing a Great American Novel. Light in August is brilliant, my Exhibit A, as such.
I’ve managed to read a lot over nearly half a century but somehow have missed Faulkner (I cracked As I Lay Dying as a 16 year old and ran screaming back to Dragon Lance fantasy). I see both sides of the argument professing love or hate. LIA is a master-craft of a novel with modernist leanings and a narrative bent displaying an author’s contempt for humanity. Sentence structure, dialogue, narrative flow, characterization – it is all a matter of taste, truly. Fans of Southern Gothic will find plenty to love; detractors, not so much. But for this reader everything in this novel worked like LitMagic.
I spoke with a friend last night that is an avowed Faulkner fan who said after finishing his first Faulkner he then read three more in quick succession. To me that would be like eating filet mignon followed by a ribeye and then a T-bone steak. One needs time to digest Faulkner, me thinks – I want to ruminate like a four stomached beast on the gristle and marrow of what it means to be a white man in a country that can’t seem to look past skin color any further than Faulkner’s characters could in post Civil War Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.
I really hate the term Great American Novel, how we capitalize it in the middle of sentences (GAN, anyone?) and talk about examples of it with reverence. It’s a questing beast for authors that strive for it and an oddity for those who write something that receives the tag . Through the years when I’ve heard “Faulkner” and Light in August there’s a downbeat before someone brings out the big GANs and people nod appreciatively. I’ve not looked up whatever passes for a definition of the GAN, but I’ll take this as my personal one: a novel that describes an immutable trait of what it is to be American. Technological advances be damned, there are things that are going to seemingly always remain the same. Our miserable, never-ending racial inequalities and frustrations line our cultural fabric like toxins. So to Faulkner I tip my hat for writing a Great American Novel. Light in August is brilliant, my Exhibit A, as such.
I’ve managed to read a lot over nearly half a century but somehow have missed Faulkner (I cracked As I Lay Dying as a 16 year old and ran screaming back to Dragon Lance fantasy). I see both sides of the argument professing love or hate. LIA is a master-craft of a novel with modernist leanings and a narrative bent displaying an author’s contempt for humanity. Sentence structure, dialogue, narrative flow, characterization – it is all a matter of taste, truly. Fans of Southern Gothic will find plenty to love; detractors, not so much. But for this reader everything in this novel worked like LitMagic.
I spoke with a friend last night that is an avowed Faulkner fan who said after finishing his first Faulkner he then read three more in quick succession. To me that would be like eating filet mignon followed by a ribeye and then a T-bone steak. One needs time to digest Faulkner, me thinks – I want to ruminate like a four stomached beast on the gristle and marrow of what it means to be a white man in a country that can’t seem to look past skin color any further than Faulkner’s characters could in post Civil War Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.
November 21, 2021
Leer a Faulkner es toda una experiencia, te puede gustar más o menos pero te impacta, eso seguro. Es el sur profundo en todo su esplendor y miseria, lleno de paisajes, sonidos, olores, todo descrito con una prosa magnífica y poderosa como una lluvia torrencial que te cala. Y qué decir de los personajes, muy numerosos pero todos ellos memorables a su manera, un ejército que parece inmerso en una gran batalla entre el bien y el mal.
Dicen que esta obra es una buena entrada a la obra de Faulkner y es cierto que el principio es 'fácil', con una narrativa convencional y una historia comprensible: la muchacha embarazada que recorre los caminos a la búsqueda del padre de su hijo - ayudada por la amabilidad de los desconocidos. Pero enseguida la perdemos de vista y aparece un personaje mucho más oscuro, Joe Christmas, marcado por la falta de amor y por su problema racial. Y aquí aflora enseguida una forma de narrar más desgarrada, con saltos temporales y llena de una pasión que hace la lectura más difícil. El tercer personaje es el reverendo Hightower, expulsado de su congregación y abandonado por su esposa, otro perdedor que no encuentra sitio en esta sociedad. La trama se va desenvolviendo de manera que las tres historias convergen a través de muchos otros personajes. Todo está relacionado, nuestras acciones - buenas o malas - tienen consecuencias y conforman un todo. Por tanto no es una obra fácil, sino que hay mucha complicación tanto en la forma como en el fondo, aunque quizá no sea el Faulkner más experimental.
El racismo, las heridas latentes de la guerra civil, el fanatismo religioso... son los fantasmas del sur, que están ahí, y que de alguna manera se encarnan en los malogrados personajes que Faulkner nos presenta, como espectros de una nación que no llegó a ser.
No me voy a extender sobre este libro porque creo que ya está todo dicho, pero reconozco que me ha impresionado y que quiero leer más del autor, entrar en su universo turbio donde la bondad de alguna manera parece salir a flote entre tanta injusticia y tanto dolor.
Dicen que esta obra es una buena entrada a la obra de Faulkner y es cierto que el principio es 'fácil', con una narrativa convencional y una historia comprensible: la muchacha embarazada que recorre los caminos a la búsqueda del padre de su hijo - ayudada por la amabilidad de los desconocidos. Pero enseguida la perdemos de vista y aparece un personaje mucho más oscuro, Joe Christmas, marcado por la falta de amor y por su problema racial. Y aquí aflora enseguida una forma de narrar más desgarrada, con saltos temporales y llena de una pasión que hace la lectura más difícil. El tercer personaje es el reverendo Hightower, expulsado de su congregación y abandonado por su esposa, otro perdedor que no encuentra sitio en esta sociedad. La trama se va desenvolviendo de manera que las tres historias convergen a través de muchos otros personajes. Todo está relacionado, nuestras acciones - buenas o malas - tienen consecuencias y conforman un todo. Por tanto no es una obra fácil, sino que hay mucha complicación tanto en la forma como en el fondo, aunque quizá no sea el Faulkner más experimental.
El racismo, las heridas latentes de la guerra civil, el fanatismo religioso... son los fantasmas del sur, que están ahí, y que de alguna manera se encarnan en los malogrados personajes que Faulkner nos presenta, como espectros de una nación que no llegó a ser.
No me voy a extender sobre este libro porque creo que ya está todo dicho, pero reconozco que me ha impresionado y que quiero leer más del autor, entrar en su universo turbio donde la bondad de alguna manera parece salir a flote entre tanta injusticia y tanto dolor.
September 12, 2023
روشنایی در اوت کتابی ایست از ویلیام فاکنر ، نویسنده مشهور آمریکایی . او دراین کتاب افزون بر داستانی جذاب و گیرا ، با سبکی پیچیده و چند لایه به موضوعات انسانی مانند نژاد، جنسیت، طبقه و دین پرداخته است .
شخصیت های کتاب فاکنر را می توان لنا گرو، زنی باردار در جستجوی پدر فرزندش، گیل هایتاور ، کشیش سابق و مرد ناامید و افسرده فعلی ، بایرون بانچ کارگری کوشا اما عاشقی خجالتی و جو کریسمس ، مردی با هویتی مبهم و گذشته ای سرشار از خشونت و آوارگی دانست . با این حال، این کتاب را می توان به عنوان داستان جو کریسمس در نظر گرفت. رفتار و اعمال او به طور مستقیم یا غیرمستقیم بر همه شخصیت های دیگر تأثیر گذاشته و این گونه است که داستان شکل می گیرد .
سبک کتاب
گرچه دانای کل را می توان راوی داستان دانست اما نویسنده با پیچ و تاب زاویهٔ دید و بیان حکایت از دید شخصیتهای مختلف و همین گونه فلش بک های فراوان به پیچیدگی داستان افزوده . نتیجه این کار او روایت های نه چندان مطمئن است که شک را در خواننده تقویت می کند . این تردیدها در سرگذشت جو کریسمس به اوج می رسد . روایت نویسنده ورفتار خود کریسمس به گونه ای ایست که خواننده را سخت به او مشکوک می کند . گرچه گذشته او هم مانند زمان حالش چندان روشن و آشکار نیست اما در آن می توان خشونت ، بی پناهی و خشونت های مذهبی را دید . از آن جا که گذشته او جزئیات چندانی ندارد ، جو همواره میان شک و تردید سرگردان است . او حتی به نژاد خود هم شک می کند و همین اشتباه است که کار او را می سازد .
لنا را باید دیگر کاراکتر متفاوت داستان دانست ، او دختر جوانی ایست که از رابطه نامشروع ، باردار شده و حالا به دنبال معشوق یا همسر آینده خود می گردد . او که دختری جسور ، جذاب و صادق است تنها با داشتن اسم و محل سکونت احتمالی معشوق ، با پای پیاده به این دیوانه خانه آمده است . هنگام صحبت های لنا با بایرون و سپس بایرون با هیتاور ، کشیش تنها ، خواننده هم به داستان و گذشته لنا ، بایرون و جو براون آگاه شده و هم نویسنده داستان خود را پیش می برد .
محتوی و داستان کتاب
فاکنر با استفاده از جو کریسمس و دیگر کاراکترها داستان خود را ساخته و با استفاده از گذشته آن ها حکایت خود را غنی کرده است ، بیشتر افراد کتاب او در جستجوی چیزی هستند ، لنا به دنبال فردی که او را باردار کرده ، کشیش در حسرت یک پیروزی ، بایرون هم شاید به دنبال یافتن عشق خود باشد . در این میان داستان کریسمس متفاوت است ، او را نمی توان فردی به دنبال هویت خود و یا فراری از آن دانست . ناآگاهی او از گذشته بر هویت او سایه انداخته و گویی برای او سرنوشتی خاص مقدر کرده . او هم به دنبال همین سرنوشت می رود ، کریسمس در پایان موجودی می شود که جامعه از او ساخته .
گرچه داستان فاکنر حالتی پیچیده و معما گونه دارد اما هدف نویسنده را نباید تنها بیان داستانی جذاب دانست . او با مهارت و استادی ، خواننده را با خود به جنوب آمریکا برده و او را با بحران نژاد پرستی ، فقر ، بی عدالتی و اثرات ویران کننده خشونت و خشونت مذهبی آشنا می کند .
فاکنر داستان خود را با غافلگیری شروع کرده ، در حالی که کتاب با لنا گرو و تلاش ناامیدانه او برای یافتن معشوق نه چندان وفادارش شروع می شود ، نویسنده با استفاده از آتش سوزی که در حال رخ دادن است و در هنگام پرسش های لنا از بایرون ، خواننده هم همگام با لنا با حکایت خانه در حال سوختن و افراد داخل آن آشنا می شود . نویسنده سپس به شرح زندگی جو کریسمس پرداخته و کودکی و جوانی پر درد او را بیان می کند .
روشنایی در اوت را باید کتاب سخت خوانی دانست ، ترجمه جناب صالح حسینی آن چنان که از او انتظار می رود ، هم به لحاظ استفاده از کلمات ناآشنا و هم آنگونه که مترجم در مقدمه کتاب گفته به سبب وفادار بودن به سبک فاکنر ، ترجمه دشواری ایست اما با وجود سخت بودن هم داستان و هم ترجمه ، پیچیدگی کتاب ، خواننده را چندان پریشان و آشفته نمی کند !
کتاب فاکنر را تنها می توان با شکوه توصیف کرد . او با مهارت و استادی راوی دوران سخت و نه چندان دور در تاریخ آمریکا شده ، دورانی که نژاد تعیین کننده سرنوشت همه بوده است .
شخصیت های کتاب فاکنر را می توان لنا گرو، زنی باردار در جستجوی پدر فرزندش، گیل هایتاور ، کشیش سابق و مرد ناامید و افسرده فعلی ، بایرون بانچ کارگری کوشا اما عاشقی خجالتی و جو کریسمس ، مردی با هویتی مبهم و گذشته ای سرشار از خشونت و آوارگی دانست . با این حال، این کتاب را می توان به عنوان داستان جو کریسمس در نظر گرفت. رفتار و اعمال او به طور مستقیم یا غیرمستقیم بر همه شخصیت های دیگر تأثیر گذاشته و این گونه است که داستان شکل می گیرد .
سبک کتاب
گرچه دانای کل را می توان راوی داستان دانست اما نویسنده با پیچ و تاب زاویهٔ دید و بیان حکایت از دید شخصیتهای مختلف و همین گونه فلش بک های فراوان به پیچیدگی داستان افزوده . نتیجه این کار او روایت های نه چندان مطمئن است که شک را در خواننده تقویت می کند . این تردیدها در سرگذشت جو کریسمس به اوج می رسد . روایت نویسنده ورفتار خود کریسمس به گونه ای ایست که خواننده را سخت به او مشکوک می کند . گرچه گذشته او هم مانند زمان حالش چندان روشن و آشکار نیست اما در آن می توان خشونت ، بی پناهی و خشونت های مذهبی را دید . از آن جا که گذشته او جزئیات چندانی ندارد ، جو همواره میان شک و تردید سرگردان است . او حتی به نژاد خود هم شک می کند و همین اشتباه است که کار او را می سازد .
لنا را باید دیگر کاراکتر متفاوت داستان دانست ، او دختر جوانی ایست که از رابطه نامشروع ، باردار شده و حالا به دنبال معشوق یا همسر آینده خود می گردد . او که دختری جسور ، جذاب و صادق است تنها با داشتن اسم و محل سکونت احتمالی معشوق ، با پای پیاده به این دیوانه خانه آمده است . هنگام صحبت های لنا با بایرون و سپس بایرون با هیتاور ، کشیش تنها ، خواننده هم به داستان و گذشته لنا ، بایرون و جو براون آگاه شده و هم نویسنده داستان خود را پیش می برد .
محتوی و داستان کتاب
فاکنر با استفاده از جو کریسمس و دیگر کاراکترها داستان خود را ساخته و با استفاده از گذشته آن ها حکایت خود را غنی کرده است ، بیشتر افراد کتاب او در جستجوی چیزی هستند ، لنا به دنبال فردی که او را باردار کرده ، کشیش در حسرت یک پیروزی ، بایرون هم شاید به دنبال یافتن عشق خود باشد . در این میان داستان کریسمس متفاوت است ، او را نمی توان فردی به دنبال هویت خود و یا فراری از آن دانست . ناآگاهی او از گذشته بر هویت او سایه انداخته و گویی برای او سرنوشتی خاص مقدر کرده . او هم به دنبال همین سرنوشت می رود ، کریسمس در پایان موجودی می شود که جامعه از او ساخته .
گرچه داستان فاکنر حالتی پیچیده و معما گونه دارد اما هدف نویسنده را نباید تنها بیان داستانی جذاب دانست . او با مهارت و استادی ، خواننده را با خود به جنوب آمریکا برده و او را با بحران نژاد پرستی ، فقر ، بی عدالتی و اثرات ویران کننده خشونت و خشونت مذهبی آشنا می کند .
فاکنر داستان خود را با غافلگیری شروع کرده ، در حالی که کتاب با لنا گرو و تلاش ناامیدانه او برای یافتن معشوق نه چندان وفادارش شروع می شود ، نویسنده با استفاده از آتش سوزی که در حال رخ دادن است و در هنگام پرسش های لنا از بایرون ، خواننده هم همگام با لنا با حکایت خانه در حال سوختن و افراد داخل آن آشنا می شود . نویسنده سپس به شرح زندگی جو کریسمس پرداخته و کودکی و جوانی پر درد او را بیان می کند .
روشنایی در اوت را باید کتاب سخت خوانی دانست ، ترجمه جناب صالح حسینی آن چنان که از او انتظار می رود ، هم به لحاظ استفاده از کلمات ناآشنا و هم آنگونه که مترجم در مقدمه کتاب گفته به سبب وفادار بودن به سبک فاکنر ، ترجمه دشواری ایست اما با وجود سخت بودن هم داستان و هم ترجمه ، پیچیدگی کتاب ، خواننده را چندان پریشان و آشفته نمی کند !
کتاب فاکنر را تنها می توان با شکوه توصیف کرد . او با مهارت و استادی راوی دوران سخت و نه چندان دور در تاریخ آمریکا شده ، دورانی که نژاد تعیین کننده سرنوشت همه بوده است .
February 18, 2024
В этом романе две сюжетные линии: подлиннее – это жизнь от самого рождения до смерти Джо Кристмаса, не знавшего кто он есть, белый или с «каплей черной крови», и несшего это проклятье по жизни, и покороче – путешествие Лины Гроув, забеременевшей и ведущей поиски Лукаса Берча, обещавшего жениться на ней, как он обустроится на новом месте, пешком из Алабамы до места действия романа городка Джефферсон, той «малой пяди» земли, на которой гений Фолкнера мог показать всю сложность и противоречия американского Юга, и в контексте региональной трагичности истории, отягченной рабовладельческим прошлым и ужасающим мировоззрением людей, его населяющих, показать всю сложность человеческой натуры, всю трагичность существования в неразрешенных противоречиях. Соединяются эти сюжетные линии на дрянном человечишке Лукасе Берче, он же Джо Браун, продавшего и предавшего обоих, за счет чего фабульное построение романа напоминает крест. Вообще, здесь много аллюзий и параллелей с христианским мифом – и имя Кристмас, и возраст его смерти, и предательство в обмен на денежное вознаграждение и многое другое. Сюжетные линии Лины Гроув и Джо Кристмаса образуют антитезу, как покой и ярость, рождение и смерть, свет и тьма.
Фолкнер постоянно возвращается к трагической истории края, выдуманной им Йокнапатофы, но соответствующей истории всего американского Юга, например, к убийству Сарторисом белых, которые были толерантны к черным, показывая корни предубежденности, то, что делало и делает это общество таким жестоким и таким нетерпимым. Гражданская война закончилась, а стереотипы расизма и попрания прав афроамериканцев, даже с минимальной долей черной крови остаются. Сюжеты романов саги, как петлями в кружевах, накрепко связывают повествования в единое эпическое полотно. Поразительно, что в этом уголке мира как будто и не слышали о праве, законе. Так отец Милли убивает в порыве ярости артиста бродячего цирка и свою дочь, не позвав врача или повитуху для оказания помощи при родах, Кристмас убивает своего названного отца Макихерна, и все без малейших последствий, если не со стороны институтов, призванных обеспечивать законность, то хотя бы моральных угрызений.
Образ Кристмаса трагичен, и это не только невозможность им самоидентифицироваться, и как результат, быть изгоем равно среди и белых, и черных, и не только трагичное детство, полное насилия, боли, одиночества и при полном, абсолютном отсутствии любви, он и убийца, и жертва в одном лице. Он совершает пассивное самоубийство, не уходя далеко от Джефферсона и позволяя себя найти.
Вообще, в книге много изгоев – это и Кристмас, и Джоанна, и Хайтауэр, и даже Лина Гроув (она идет в поиски мужа не столько по большой любви к никчемному Берчу/Брауну, а сколько, чтобы не быть подвергнутой остракизму, как согрешившая женщина, родившая вне брака) - это говорит о нетерпимом обществе, требующим соответствия какой-то группе или каким-то нормам; невписывающиеся в каноны социальной группы, немедленно отвергаются; в романе также много религиозных фанатиков – и Макихерн, и Хайнс, и та же Джоанна, истолковывающие религиозные догматы в исключительно жестком трактовании оппозиции Бога и дьявола, апофеозом фанатизма является и палач Перси Гримм, которому мало убить, ему нужно унизить человеческое достоинство, совершить ритуальное действо, фанатично все белое население Джефферсона, готового линчевать за каплю черной крови и преследовать, как зверя. Именно фанатизм (религиозный, социальный, расовый) и сопутствующая ему нетерпимость является объектом пристальнейшего внимания и анализа Фолкнера.
«Свет в августе» - роман, несомненно, трагический, но Фолкнер не захотел заканчивать его на трагичной ноте. Убивающему и фанатичному Джефферсону он строит антитезу образом молодой матери, изливающей всем своим существом покой и надежность для ее новорожденного ребенка, знающей, что она хочет от жизни – полноценной семейной жизни, осознающей, что ей больше не придется путешествовать в силу семейных обязанностей и традиционного уклада жизни, и радостно воспринимающей окружающий ее мир.
Фолкнер постоянно возвращается к трагической истории края, выдуманной им Йокнапатофы, но соответствующей истории всего американского Юга, например, к убийству Сарторисом белых, которые были толерантны к черным, показывая корни предубежденности, то, что делало и делает это общество таким жестоким и таким нетерпимым. Гражданская война закончилась, а стереотипы расизма и попрания прав афроамериканцев, даже с минимальной долей черной крови остаются. Сюжеты романов саги, как петлями в кружевах, накрепко связывают повествования в единое эпическое полотно. Поразительно, что в этом уголке мира как будто и не слышали о праве, законе. Так отец Милли убивает в порыве ярости артиста бродячего цирка и свою дочь, не позвав врача или повитуху для оказания помощи при родах, Кристмас убивает своего названного отца Макихерна, и все без малейших последствий, если не со стороны институтов, призванных обеспечивать законность, то хотя бы моральных угрызений.
Образ Кристмаса трагичен, и это не только невозможность им самоидентифицироваться, и как результат, быть изгоем равно среди и белых, и черных, и не только трагичное детство, полное насилия, боли, одиночества и при полном, абсолютном отсутствии любви, он и убийца, и жертва в одном лице. Он совершает пассивное самоубийство, не уходя далеко от Джефферсона и позволяя себя найти.
Вообще, в книге много изгоев – это и Кристмас, и Джоанна, и Хайтауэр, и даже Лина Гроув (она идет в поиски мужа не столько по большой любви к никчемному Берчу/Брауну, а сколько, чтобы не быть подвергнутой остракизму, как согрешившая женщина, родившая вне брака) - это говорит о нетерпимом обществе, требующим соответствия какой-то группе или каким-то нормам; невписывающиеся в каноны социальной группы, немедленно отвергаются; в романе также много религиозных фанатиков – и Макихерн, и Хайнс, и та же Джоанна, истолковывающие религиозные догматы в исключительно жестком трактовании оппозиции Бога и дьявола, апофеозом фанатизма является и палач Перси Гримм, которому мало убить, ему нужно унизить человеческое достоинство, совершить ритуальное действо, фанатично все белое население Джефферсона, готового линчевать за каплю черной крови и преследовать, как зверя. Именно фанатизм (религиозный, социальный, расовый) и сопутствующая ему нетерпимость является объектом пристальнейшего внимания и анализа Фолкнера.
«Свет в августе» - роман, несомненно, трагический, но Фолкнер не захотел заканчивать его на трагичной ноте. Убивающему и фанатичному Джефферсону он строит антитезу образом молодой матери, изливающей всем своим существом покой и надежность для ее новорожденного ребенка, знающей, что она хочет от жизни – полноценной семейной жизни, осознающей, что ей больше не придется путешествовать в силу семейных обязанностей и традиционного уклада жизни, и радостно воспринимающей окружающий ее мир.
September 1, 2021
As the month of August came to an end, I sat outside and felt the final rays of the warm, waning sunlight, flipping through the final pages of Light in August, attempting to become one with the environment and time period for which it was meant. I remember finding out about Faulkner when I was 11, maybe 12. I had gone to a used bookstore and remember seeing a set of collected work – they looked drab, massive, uninviting. I have found a picture of them:
Look at them. They look so bland and boring. Dusty, almost. Not a move of genius by Vintage, maybe. Now, about 13 or 14 years after the fact, I am 4 books into Faulkner’s works. I plan to read them all in time. There is something about his works that keeps me coming back. Gravity might be the right word. Controlled chaos. Pathos. He tackles feelings that I feel ashamed to think of – this, of course, doesn’t make them any less true. All throughout his writing, he is also prone to go on “creative writing” thought experiments – taking inspiration from any and all muses flying above him. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. With Light in August, I felt that it missed more than it landed. Not boring, by any means. But the content of this book is perhaps closer in feel to the colour “palette” used by Vintage in their collected works of Faulkner.
The topics covered here are not foreign to the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha. First and foremost – race and racial identity. It is to be expected that Faulkner’s handling of these issues is not as graceful as we may expect from our age – it is a book written in 1932, after all. However, I believe that there is deep compassion in his discussions, pointing out the sheer idiocy of segregation, racial supremacy, and slavery. His true opinion comes out repeatedly through his most delicately handled characters, in this case Reverend Gail Hightower: a solitary man tired of the separation, the hate, the politics. A man for whom the draw of a book in the sun overpowers all. The image of him in his study re-discovering Tennyson will stay with me for a while. You also come across other themes repeated across Faulkner’s works – staying true to an identity passed down across generations (perhaps to the detriment of yourself and all around you), dealing with social requirements and the weight of community expectations, coming to terms with the frivolity of many romantic relationships. Poignant in these themes within Light in August was the lasting power of abuse throughout a life. Hurt people hurt people.
Despite how much I enjoyed thinking about these ideas, the truth is that the wild, indignant energy that coursed through the first three hundred pages of the novel lost steam, coming to a sputtering and pathetic stop about 50 pages out from the finish line. As I mentioned, Faulkner’s musings became grating, the introduction of characters into the narrative as late as 470 pages in (out of 507) became ridiculous, and I felt that he could not hold the centre of the narrative together as well as he did with The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom!. Oh well. Hope the other ones are more smooth in nature.
Also, random thought: is suspiration the most Faulknerian word of all time? I think so.
Look at them. They look so bland and boring. Dusty, almost. Not a move of genius by Vintage, maybe. Now, about 13 or 14 years after the fact, I am 4 books into Faulkner’s works. I plan to read them all in time. There is something about his works that keeps me coming back. Gravity might be the right word. Controlled chaos. Pathos. He tackles feelings that I feel ashamed to think of – this, of course, doesn’t make them any less true. All throughout his writing, he is also prone to go on “creative writing” thought experiments – taking inspiration from any and all muses flying above him. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. With Light in August, I felt that it missed more than it landed. Not boring, by any means. But the content of this book is perhaps closer in feel to the colour “palette” used by Vintage in their collected works of Faulkner.
The topics covered here are not foreign to the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha. First and foremost – race and racial identity. It is to be expected that Faulkner’s handling of these issues is not as graceful as we may expect from our age – it is a book written in 1932, after all. However, I believe that there is deep compassion in his discussions, pointing out the sheer idiocy of segregation, racial supremacy, and slavery. His true opinion comes out repeatedly through his most delicately handled characters, in this case Reverend Gail Hightower: a solitary man tired of the separation, the hate, the politics. A man for whom the draw of a book in the sun overpowers all. The image of him in his study re-discovering Tennyson will stay with me for a while. You also come across other themes repeated across Faulkner’s works – staying true to an identity passed down across generations (perhaps to the detriment of yourself and all around you), dealing with social requirements and the weight of community expectations, coming to terms with the frivolity of many romantic relationships. Poignant in these themes within Light in August was the lasting power of abuse throughout a life. Hurt people hurt people.
Despite how much I enjoyed thinking about these ideas, the truth is that the wild, indignant energy that coursed through the first three hundred pages of the novel lost steam, coming to a sputtering and pathetic stop about 50 pages out from the finish line. As I mentioned, Faulkner’s musings became grating, the introduction of characters into the narrative as late as 470 pages in (out of 507) became ridiculous, and I felt that he could not hold the centre of the narrative together as well as he did with The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom!. Oh well. Hope the other ones are more smooth in nature.
Also, random thought: is suspiration the most Faulknerian word of all time? I think so.
September 10, 2013
This novel is my first experience of William Faulkner’s writing. I was drawn to it partly because one of my favourite novelists, John Steinbeck, was a great admirer of Faulkner’s work and partly because I felt it was time to fill the gap in my literary education caused by my unfamiliarity with one of the great novelists of the 20th century.
My research into which of Faulkner’s novels to start with indicated that Light in August is one of his more accessible works. This proved to be so, or at least, I found it very accessible. In it, Faulkner weaves together three stories. The novel starts with the story of Lena Grove, a young woman who has walked from Alabama to Mississippi looking for the father of her unborn child. It moves on to the story of Joe Christmas, an abused orphan obsessed with his uncertain racial identity, and to the story of Gail Hightower, a disgraced preacher living on the fringes of society. Their stories intersect in the fictional town of Jefferson and through them Faulker explores themes of alienation, religious intolerance and race and gender relations.
Faulkner’s narrative structure is fascinating. It combines omniscient third-person narrative with interior monologues and extended flashbacks. Faulkner also allows characters to tell parts of the story to each other, relating their experience of particular events and speculating about parts of the action they have not directly witnessed. The point of view constantly changes from one character to another and the narrative travels back and forward in time and place, which allows the same scene to be described from different perspectives.
As I listened to the audiobook I was irresistibly reminded of the writing of Thomas Hardy. In the past couple of years, I’ve learned to appreciate Hardy’s writing much more than I have in the past. This makes me think that I probably wouldn't have liked Faulkner if I’d read him in my teens or twenties. When I read Hardy now it feels like I’m reading Greek or Shakespearean tragedy in the form of a novel. That’s also how I felt when I listened to Light in August. While the narrative style of the two novelists is quite different, they both set their novels in a fictional location based on a real place - Yoknapatawpha County for Faulkner and Wessex for Hardy. Other similarities between Hardy and Faulkner include their focus on characters living on the margins of society whose idiom they capture in striking dialogue, as well as their use of powerful symbolism and imagery that is almost painterly in its intensity. Further, Hardy and Faulkner were both poets as well as novelists and their poetry seems ever present in their prose. And somehow I think I'm going to be as haunted by Joe Christmas as I am by Jude Frawley and Michael Henchard.
Will Patton narrated the audiobook. His accent and speech rhythms brought the characters to life. Listening to the characters’ words and not just reading them transported me to their world - a world which both shocked and moved me. Listening to this novel was a very special literary experience.
April 5, 2023
واقعا عالی بود 👌
April 28, 2023
منکه نمیتونم کمتر از چهار به فاکنر بدم، حتی اگه به اندازه چهار ستاره هم شگفت زده ام نکرده باشه، پس ۴ و ۲۵
اگر هوای حوصله آفتابی شد و یادم موند، یه ریویوو دیپ براش میذارم :)
البته بعد از شنیدن نظر همخوان های گرامی
اگر هوای حوصله آفتابی شد و یادم موند، یه ریویوو دیپ براش میذارم :)
البته بعد از شنیدن نظر همخوان های گرامی
May 1, 2012
Don't pray over no body. I knew that I would figure it out. It was something I already knew. That's how you don't feel bad about wanting to know anyone. Don't expect anything. It doesn't get rid of the falling feeling when you think about them, though. Light in August is an ultimate societal kangaroo's pouch of claustrophobic guilt for me. Where does anyone belong?
William Faulkner writes to me in my favorite way of being talked to in stories (anything). If I could have this in every book I read I would be so happy. It's like being a real person and you're trusted with something precious, like a soul or mortal heart. It is so simple, really, but I can't get it enough. The characters live in their world, they look at each other and I can hear what they think about each other and their lives. He says about her what she might say about him. He thinks he's lying and then you get an idea of what he thinks a lie really is. It's a brilliant way of doing it, really. What they are saying has vibrations and I'm not wearing any shoes and if they haven't swept the floor I can feel that too, if the author has told me so or not. I'm not told everything as the end all truth. This is this is that is this. Bless you, William Faulkner. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I don't have a lot of (useful) smarts but I have this. It's the constant of my life, my one true love and solace. I can read a book and see the ways it could go, threads to the past and hopes and all of that stuff. If I could write about this well I'd be one hell of a book reviewer. Characterization is the master(bater) of my heart. King and queen and off with my head.
I was going to write something about unrequited love.
Memory believes before knowing remembers. Joe Christmas is my character. My living and breathing person. My suffocated person that reflects from space time years away too late. There are some other great ones in Light in August but it is Joe Christmas that spurred my unrequited love (for a lack of a better word. You can call it Marsian love, or plutonic love, or like celebrating Christmas for something other than Christ). Will you think me too sick if I confess that I felt that bit of envy in my mouth (it tastes like your own mouth flavor but you aren't used to it for once) when I see someone aloof, mysteriously inside themselves even in the middle of the shit? It is sick because I'm no different. I want to be outside of me too damned bad, that's it. I know too damned well how Joe Christmas felt between the black and white people. Cold spot, hot spot. Hot and cold doesn't make warm. Somewhere else to be and he doesn't make a third triangle point, not ever. He was that to me. Everyone you can make out in the fuzzy color spectrum (are black and white even colors? They don't make warm) are written by a writer you can't read using your own what makes you you. I'll call mine my Mariel intutition for this review. (I shouldn't. It's paranoid as fuck.) Listen to their foot falls running from the jail that houses you. Look back at me! They don't. You don't know because the speed of sound travels slower than the speed of your people reading eyes. Keep watching their faces for that look you could have sworn you felt when you weren't looking. Don't open the letter from your hot and cold like menopausal lover because you might start to pray over your body too. The warmth is like the camp kids putting your hand in a bowl of warm water to make you pee. You could keep getting up in the middle of the night just in case. It is the worst when you expect to pee and it doesn't happen. I couldn't think of anything else. Better stay close just in case. Better stay close in case you could go on being the same and no one is going to pray for anyone else to be anything else. Better get it over with. I felt a little freaked out for talking to him in my head to please don't do that. I had no right.
It was not the hard work which he hated, nor the punishment and injustice. He was used to that before he ever saw either of them. He expected no less, and so he was neither outraged nor surprised. It was the woman: that soft kindness which he believed himself doomed to be forever victim of and which he hated worse than he did the hard and ruthless justice of men. 'She is trying to make me cry,' he thought, lying cold and rigid in his bed, his hands beneath his head and the moonlight falling across his body, hearing the steady murmur of the man's voice as it mounted the stairway on its first heavenward stage; 'She was trying to make me cry. Then she thinks that would have had me.'
Joe Christmas is going to haunt me. I always say that. What can I say? Somewhere between my left and right ear is enough company to keep me grounded. Who else? Who else!
The minister Hightower in his walled in from the rest of the world house. The faces are never going to hint at passion again. His own big body is enough to weight him down in his chair by the wi(n)dow to mourn those he won't love. Byron Bunch the man who never told a lie because he didn't have the letter F to put in lie. Steal it! It's on discount over on Sesame Street. He won't. Hightower would move hell on earth to stop him. Can I confess thay Byron Bunch did not move me? The pregnant Lena in search of her if you could call him a husband (er) all the way from Alabama did not move me either. What was interesting about them was that they were monuments for other sounds to bounce off of. Why, you're right kind. I'm doing the right thing at my own expense. Really? And I never asked for nothing. He would ask in the doing. I wasn't moved because there was a little bit of I already knew that for me before they were done. I wouldn't want the right.
I didn't think that the mistrust of their niggers or women was what was important. (It COULD be anything.) It was what they were willing to pray over. You know, what you would look at- first glance only- enough to call it yours. They allow Joe Christmas's desmise in their peace of mind for the thousand dollar reward. Next place. Easy peazy lemon squeazy. Hey, it's all the same. Look how far we have come, baby. It's interesting to me what is easy for someone else. Lena's slow reponse. I could time it in my mind from the corners of the mouth to the crease by the eye. It doesn't move much. It's all right! Sure, a baby. Yeah, that guy fucked me and I'm pregnant and look I knew it was going to work out. If Faulkner had a fault it was her profound sigh over Brown (the fucker). Don't know if I believe that. I think she was just waiting for her cue for the response again. Lena is Lena when she's in a place of her own (that she won't eat unless she is was a perfect touch too). The sigh is withheld, I think. Anyway, who am I to quibble? (I might take characters as too real...) I don't care so much about her state as a loose women in a world of men who will do for her if she looks like she might ask for them to do so. Those things don't have to be true. It's interesting that they took for granted that it was true. I kind of loved Faulkner for getting that right. People are fucking sexists and fucking racists and it doesn't have to be that way. The people in Jefferson took it all for granted. Joe took for granted what wouldn't happen in his limbo of that not really a color of black or white. He's no different and yet he haunted me because he was pining for something else. Hightower too, even if his was dead. Bunch's is a phantom like one of Lena's smiles. Call it my unrequited love. I want to see it the way through and not if I can already see its shadow there. I know I'm more like Joe because I didn't relate to Lena at all. I would never have trusted those people. It isn't a comfortable thing to realize and then the person you can relate to wouldn't trust you either.
My unrequited love descriptor of all my time on this planet is Lucy in Peanuts sitting by Schroeder's piano bench. I would want a violinist. Put my ear to the wood and listen to its winds going in one ear and finding some place between the two. Linus's blanket is this. Faulkner's sentences hook me and its worm goes in one ear. My security is knowing this. I can read this. Don't pray over no body. If Joe Christmas was a killer? There was a Joe Christmas that wasn't. There could have been a Joe Christmas after that wasn't. Don't pray for something else. Don't kneel at the sacrificial altar for something else either. It's something I already knew. Something about not writing people off. Write them enough to live. I don't want to be Hightower and never again see on faces anything else but judgement. My unrequited love would be Charlie Brown's sad walk home between the black cabins and the safe white houses that really aren't so safe either. It's not finished. Will I have the right to want it? I'm no different so okay.
When he went to bed that night his mind was made up to run away. He felt like an eagle: hard, sufficient, potent, remorseless, strong. But that passed, though he did not then know that, like the eagle, his own flesh was well as all space was still a cage.
Faulkner is great. He has their cruelty and their bruises and their community of what people want. I don't know why I'm not giving this the full five stars, really, except that what I already knew like looking out of a window after the sound has already happened thing. It could just be one of those feelings I have that I can't explain very well. (That's also my unrequited love.) There is that thing where I wish I was invincible and no one would know what I was thinking either. You get where you're not sure if you're being laughed at or not to where knowing you're being laughed at is better. Damn you, Joe. Stop reminding me!
The review that I was going to write that was rolling around in my mind yesterday was better than this, as always. Still, I hope this will mean something to someone, anyway. I don't see how it could but I hope it will.
P.s. Sorry for the repost an hour or so later. Goodreads and Alice in her chair are fucking with me. I know it's a crime against goodreads. I hope you can forgive me.
William Faulkner writes to me in my favorite way of being talked to in stories (anything). If I could have this in every book I read I would be so happy. It's like being a real person and you're trusted with something precious, like a soul or mortal heart. It is so simple, really, but I can't get it enough. The characters live in their world, they look at each other and I can hear what they think about each other and their lives. He says about her what she might say about him. He thinks he's lying and then you get an idea of what he thinks a lie really is. It's a brilliant way of doing it, really. What they are saying has vibrations and I'm not wearing any shoes and if they haven't swept the floor I can feel that too, if the author has told me so or not. I'm not told everything as the end all truth. This is this is that is this. Bless you, William Faulkner. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I don't have a lot of (useful) smarts but I have this. It's the constant of my life, my one true love and solace. I can read a book and see the ways it could go, threads to the past and hopes and all of that stuff. If I could write about this well I'd be one hell of a book reviewer. Characterization is the master(bater) of my heart. King and queen and off with my head.
I was going to write something about unrequited love.
Memory believes before knowing remembers. Joe Christmas is my character. My living and breathing person. My suffocated person that reflects from space time years away too late. There are some other great ones in Light in August but it is Joe Christmas that spurred my unrequited love (for a lack of a better word. You can call it Marsian love, or plutonic love, or like celebrating Christmas for something other than Christ). Will you think me too sick if I confess that I felt that bit of envy in my mouth (it tastes like your own mouth flavor but you aren't used to it for once) when I see someone aloof, mysteriously inside themselves even in the middle of the shit? It is sick because I'm no different. I want to be outside of me too damned bad, that's it. I know too damned well how Joe Christmas felt between the black and white people. Cold spot, hot spot. Hot and cold doesn't make warm. Somewhere else to be and he doesn't make a third triangle point, not ever. He was that to me. Everyone you can make out in the fuzzy color spectrum (are black and white even colors? They don't make warm) are written by a writer you can't read using your own what makes you you. I'll call mine my Mariel intutition for this review. (I shouldn't. It's paranoid as fuck.) Listen to their foot falls running from the jail that houses you. Look back at me! They don't. You don't know because the speed of sound travels slower than the speed of your people reading eyes. Keep watching their faces for that look you could have sworn you felt when you weren't looking. Don't open the letter from your hot and cold like menopausal lover because you might start to pray over your body too. The warmth is like the camp kids putting your hand in a bowl of warm water to make you pee. You could keep getting up in the middle of the night just in case. It is the worst when you expect to pee and it doesn't happen. I couldn't think of anything else. Better stay close just in case. Better stay close in case you could go on being the same and no one is going to pray for anyone else to be anything else. Better get it over with. I felt a little freaked out for talking to him in my head to please don't do that. I had no right.
It was not the hard work which he hated, nor the punishment and injustice. He was used to that before he ever saw either of them. He expected no less, and so he was neither outraged nor surprised. It was the woman: that soft kindness which he believed himself doomed to be forever victim of and which he hated worse than he did the hard and ruthless justice of men. 'She is trying to make me cry,' he thought, lying cold and rigid in his bed, his hands beneath his head and the moonlight falling across his body, hearing the steady murmur of the man's voice as it mounted the stairway on its first heavenward stage; 'She was trying to make me cry. Then she thinks that would have had me.'
Joe Christmas is going to haunt me. I always say that. What can I say? Somewhere between my left and right ear is enough company to keep me grounded. Who else? Who else!
The minister Hightower in his walled in from the rest of the world house. The faces are never going to hint at passion again. His own big body is enough to weight him down in his chair by the wi(n)dow to mourn those he won't love. Byron Bunch the man who never told a lie because he didn't have the letter F to put in lie. Steal it! It's on discount over on Sesame Street. He won't. Hightower would move hell on earth to stop him. Can I confess thay Byron Bunch did not move me? The pregnant Lena in search of her if you could call him a husband (er) all the way from Alabama did not move me either. What was interesting about them was that they were monuments for other sounds to bounce off of. Why, you're right kind. I'm doing the right thing at my own expense. Really? And I never asked for nothing. He would ask in the doing. I wasn't moved because there was a little bit of I already knew that for me before they were done. I wouldn't want the right.
I didn't think that the mistrust of their niggers or women was what was important. (It COULD be anything.) It was what they were willing to pray over. You know, what you would look at- first glance only- enough to call it yours. They allow Joe Christmas's desmise in their peace of mind for the thousand dollar reward. Next place. Easy peazy lemon squeazy. Hey, it's all the same. Look how far we have come, baby. It's interesting to me what is easy for someone else. Lena's slow reponse. I could time it in my mind from the corners of the mouth to the crease by the eye. It doesn't move much. It's all right! Sure, a baby. Yeah, that guy fucked me and I'm pregnant and look I knew it was going to work out. If Faulkner had a fault it was her profound sigh over Brown (the fucker). Don't know if I believe that. I think she was just waiting for her cue for the response again. Lena is Lena when she's in a place of her own (that she won't eat unless she is was a perfect touch too). The sigh is withheld, I think. Anyway, who am I to quibble? (I might take characters as too real...) I don't care so much about her state as a loose women in a world of men who will do for her if she looks like she might ask for them to do so. Those things don't have to be true. It's interesting that they took for granted that it was true. I kind of loved Faulkner for getting that right. People are fucking sexists and fucking racists and it doesn't have to be that way. The people in Jefferson took it all for granted. Joe took for granted what wouldn't happen in his limbo of that not really a color of black or white. He's no different and yet he haunted me because he was pining for something else. Hightower too, even if his was dead. Bunch's is a phantom like one of Lena's smiles. Call it my unrequited love. I want to see it the way through and not if I can already see its shadow there. I know I'm more like Joe because I didn't relate to Lena at all. I would never have trusted those people. It isn't a comfortable thing to realize and then the person you can relate to wouldn't trust you either.
My unrequited love descriptor of all my time on this planet is Lucy in Peanuts sitting by Schroeder's piano bench. I would want a violinist. Put my ear to the wood and listen to its winds going in one ear and finding some place between the two. Linus's blanket is this. Faulkner's sentences hook me and its worm goes in one ear. My security is knowing this. I can read this. Don't pray over no body. If Joe Christmas was a killer? There was a Joe Christmas that wasn't. There could have been a Joe Christmas after that wasn't. Don't pray for something else. Don't kneel at the sacrificial altar for something else either. It's something I already knew. Something about not writing people off. Write them enough to live. I don't want to be Hightower and never again see on faces anything else but judgement. My unrequited love would be Charlie Brown's sad walk home between the black cabins and the safe white houses that really aren't so safe either. It's not finished. Will I have the right to want it? I'm no different so okay.
When he went to bed that night his mind was made up to run away. He felt like an eagle: hard, sufficient, potent, remorseless, strong. But that passed, though he did not then know that, like the eagle, his own flesh was well as all space was still a cage.
Faulkner is great. He has their cruelty and their bruises and their community of what people want. I don't know why I'm not giving this the full five stars, really, except that what I already knew like looking out of a window after the sound has already happened thing. It could just be one of those feelings I have that I can't explain very well. (That's also my unrequited love.) There is that thing where I wish I was invincible and no one would know what I was thinking either. You get where you're not sure if you're being laughed at or not to where knowing you're being laughed at is better. Damn you, Joe. Stop reminding me!
The review that I was going to write that was rolling around in my mind yesterday was better than this, as always. Still, I hope this will mean something to someone, anyway. I don't see how it could but I hope it will.
P.s. Sorry for the repost an hour or so later. Goodreads and Alice in her chair are fucking with me. I know it's a crime against goodreads. I hope you can forgive me.
November 10, 2024
Recién salido del sur más profundo y racista de norteamérica. Como consigue meterte Faulkner en su microcosmos:
“(…) cuando la ciudad supo que Hines recorría a pie el condado para organizar mítines en las iglesias negras, cuando la ciudad advirtió que, de vez en cuando, unas negras, que llevaban lo que no podía ser otra cosa que vituallas, entraban por detrás de la casa en que la pareja vivía y salían luego con las manos vacías, también se asombró durante algún tiempo y dejó luego de pensar en ello. Como Hines era viejo e inofensivo, la ciudad acabó por olvidar, por disculpar lo que habría censurado si se tratase de un hombre joven. Se limitaba a decir: «Están locos, cuando se trata de negros se vuelven locos. Quizás son yanquis.»”.
El comienzo es muy bueno. Nadie consigue como Faulkner hacerte sentir que lo que narra es auténtico. Esas descripciones tan buenas y tan propias suyas, ese escribir relajado, y que con apenas dos renglones consigue una fidelidad mayor que otros con página y páginas:
“Se le veía vagar por la ciudad constantemente, inútil, sin rumbo, conducido el vehículo cómodamente por B., que no sabía muy bien cómo representar su papel de hombre ocioso, disoluto, envidiable.”
Hacía tiempo que no lo leía y no recordaba esa sensación que solo me ocurre con muy poquitos como Dostoievski, Cervantes, o el mismo Faulkner, en el sentido de que parecen conocer a la perfección la condición humana hasta en sus mínimos matices, y como lo transmiten:
“(…) la gente es igual en todas partes, pero es en las pequeñas ciudades -en las que el mal es más difícil de cometer, más difícil de guardar en secreto- donde las gentes llegan a inventar más historias de unos y de otros; basta con una cosa: tener una idea, una sola y única idea, y susurrarla al oído de los demás.”
Cuando lees a Faulkner te vienen recuerdos de la mejor tradición literaria norteamericana reciente, te das cuenta que casi todos los grandes han tenido al maestro de maestros como referencia: Marilyn Robinson y su temática recurrente de la sociedad rural norteamericana religiosa ultraortodoxa, esos personajes tan siniestros temerosos de Dios, o Philip Roth y los conflictos de identidad racial propia (La mancha humana) o la misma Carson McCullers con esas complicadas y literarias relaciones sentimentales. Y saltando el océano, como no recordar a Benet y esos juegos temporales ydescripciones tan faulkerianas de territorios imaginarios.
Otra cosa que no recordaba, ese tránsito continuo temporal adelante y atrás, sin previo aviso. Las elipsis y trampas de gran narrador que continuamente nos siembra a lo largo de toda la novela. O la continua investigación de personajes que no sospechas que en algún momento serán protagonistas. Faulkner nos lleva y nos trae a los lectores a su antojo, sin apenas explicación, imbuido por la magia de su prosa, aquí por cierto es menos fantástica que cuando entra en su espacio natural, fantasioso y sureño de Yonknapataupha.
“(…) cuando la ciudad supo que Hines recorría a pie el condado para organizar mítines en las iglesias negras, cuando la ciudad advirtió que, de vez en cuando, unas negras, que llevaban lo que no podía ser otra cosa que vituallas, entraban por detrás de la casa en que la pareja vivía y salían luego con las manos vacías, también se asombró durante algún tiempo y dejó luego de pensar en ello. Como Hines era viejo e inofensivo, la ciudad acabó por olvidar, por disculpar lo que habría censurado si se tratase de un hombre joven. Se limitaba a decir: «Están locos, cuando se trata de negros se vuelven locos. Quizás son yanquis.»”.
El comienzo es muy bueno. Nadie consigue como Faulkner hacerte sentir que lo que narra es auténtico. Esas descripciones tan buenas y tan propias suyas, ese escribir relajado, y que con apenas dos renglones consigue una fidelidad mayor que otros con página y páginas:
“Se le veía vagar por la ciudad constantemente, inútil, sin rumbo, conducido el vehículo cómodamente por B., que no sabía muy bien cómo representar su papel de hombre ocioso, disoluto, envidiable.”
Hacía tiempo que no lo leía y no recordaba esa sensación que solo me ocurre con muy poquitos como Dostoievski, Cervantes, o el mismo Faulkner, en el sentido de que parecen conocer a la perfección la condición humana hasta en sus mínimos matices, y como lo transmiten:
“(…) la gente es igual en todas partes, pero es en las pequeñas ciudades -en las que el mal es más difícil de cometer, más difícil de guardar en secreto- donde las gentes llegan a inventar más historias de unos y de otros; basta con una cosa: tener una idea, una sola y única idea, y susurrarla al oído de los demás.”
Cuando lees a Faulkner te vienen recuerdos de la mejor tradición literaria norteamericana reciente, te das cuenta que casi todos los grandes han tenido al maestro de maestros como referencia: Marilyn Robinson y su temática recurrente de la sociedad rural norteamericana religiosa ultraortodoxa, esos personajes tan siniestros temerosos de Dios, o Philip Roth y los conflictos de identidad racial propia (La mancha humana) o la misma Carson McCullers con esas complicadas y literarias relaciones sentimentales. Y saltando el océano, como no recordar a Benet y esos juegos temporales ydescripciones tan faulkerianas de territorios imaginarios.
Otra cosa que no recordaba, ese tránsito continuo temporal adelante y atrás, sin previo aviso. Las elipsis y trampas de gran narrador que continuamente nos siembra a lo largo de toda la novela. O la continua investigación de personajes que no sospechas que en algún momento serán protagonistas. Faulkner nos lleva y nos trae a los lectores a su antojo, sin apenas explicación, imbuido por la magia de su prosa, aquí por cierto es menos fantástica que cuando entra en su espacio natural, fantasioso y sureño de Yonknapataupha.
September 1, 2015
Questa estate sono stata in vacanza ad Otranto ed ho visitato la stupenda cattedrale della città. Il pavimento della chiesa è composto di un bellissimo mosaico che parte dall’entrata e finisce all’altare. Il mosaico rappresenta le principali scene bibliche dell’Antico Testamento, raffigurando i principali personaggi biblici, da Adamo ed Eva, Caino ed Abele, l’Arca di Noè.
Cosa c’entra tutto questo con “Luce d’agosto”? Mi è venuto in mente il mosaico di Otranto perché questo poderoso romanzo può definirsi una Bibbia. Un Bibbia dell’arido Sud degli Stati Uniti, un’opera grandiosa in cui ogni singolo personaggio ricorda un protagonista del Nuovo o dell’Antico Testamento. Figure gigantesche nella tragicità eppure semplici: una Madonna, Lena Grove, ieratica e quieta come la Vergine di fronte all’Arcangelo Gabriele, con in seno un figlio il cui padre è partito dall’Alabama alla volta del Mississippi, un individuo avido e meschino che fugge dalle responsabilità, rincorso e mai raggiunto da Lena nel suo viaggio tranquillo e interminabile per strade su cui si affacciano campi di cotone abbacinati dal sole d’agosto, un sole che dà una luminescenza particolare, così intensa come se sapesse che è finita, che il buio sta per prevalere e quelli sono gli ultimi fuochi dell’estate. Un San Giuseppe, un padre putativo, Byron Bunch, un uomo che è arrivato alla mezza età lavorando alla segheria di Jefferson ogni giorno mandato dal Signore, anche il sabato pomeriggio, senza pensare ad altro per paura di perderlo e soffrire, che viene trasformato dall’incontro con Lena, sconvolto nelle sue certezze ma sempre umile e pronto al sacrificio. Un Giovanni Battista, il reverendo Hightower, nato da una coppia di età avanzata, con una unica missione da compiere, andare a Jefferson, nel Mississippi, nel luogo in cui suo nonno, alla guida di un pugno di soldati confederati, fu ucciso nel corso di un’azione militare intrapresa per distruggere i depositi del generale Grant. C’è una Maria Maddalena, Joanna Burden, la donna che dedica la sua vita ad aiutare i negri come una croce per l’espiazione dei peccati dei bianchi, colei che verrà presa da passione furiosa, dopo una vita triste da zitella, per Joe Christmas, uno che non sa neanche che cosa sia, solo Dio padre sa se nelle sue vene scorra sangue bianco o nero, abbandonato da neonato sulla strada la notte della Vigilia di Natale e cresciuto in un orfanotrofio fino a quando è stato adottato da una coppia senza figli che lo cresce tra obblighi rigorosi e punizioni esemplari per farne un perfetto cristiano, quando invece il risultato sarà tutt’altro. Christmas è il personaggio più inquietante e contemporaneamente più affascinante del romanzo, nei cui confronti si prova pietà, disprezzo, orrore, pena. Colui che, come nel rito sacrificale della celebrazione eucaristica, offre il suo sangue e il suo corpo in sacrificio per l’umanità. Il sacrificio di sé stesso per liberare il mondo dal Maligno. E intorno ai protagonisti profeti schiamazzanti che predicano l’avvento del regno di Dio per pulire la terra dalla sozzura e l’abominio della razza negra, sceriffi con la stella di latta che inseguono per le strade impolverate i criminali, negri talmente scuri da essere invisibili al mondo e gli abitanti bianchi di Jefferson che fungono da spettatori alla tragedia in atto, bravi cristiani che girano con le Bibbie in mano e frequentano ogni domenica la chiesa, preda di una isteria razziale che li porta a condannare senza appello il sangue negro ovunque esso scorra.
Un capolavoro scritto con una scrittura affilata come una lama, asciutta ed essenziale, da leggere perché ci insegni “quanto sia falso anche il più profondo dei libri quando lo si applica alla vita”.
Cosa c’entra tutto questo con “Luce d’agosto”? Mi è venuto in mente il mosaico di Otranto perché questo poderoso romanzo può definirsi una Bibbia. Un Bibbia dell’arido Sud degli Stati Uniti, un’opera grandiosa in cui ogni singolo personaggio ricorda un protagonista del Nuovo o dell’Antico Testamento. Figure gigantesche nella tragicità eppure semplici: una Madonna, Lena Grove, ieratica e quieta come la Vergine di fronte all’Arcangelo Gabriele, con in seno un figlio il cui padre è partito dall’Alabama alla volta del Mississippi, un individuo avido e meschino che fugge dalle responsabilità, rincorso e mai raggiunto da Lena nel suo viaggio tranquillo e interminabile per strade su cui si affacciano campi di cotone abbacinati dal sole d’agosto, un sole che dà una luminescenza particolare, così intensa come se sapesse che è finita, che il buio sta per prevalere e quelli sono gli ultimi fuochi dell’estate. Un San Giuseppe, un padre putativo, Byron Bunch, un uomo che è arrivato alla mezza età lavorando alla segheria di Jefferson ogni giorno mandato dal Signore, anche il sabato pomeriggio, senza pensare ad altro per paura di perderlo e soffrire, che viene trasformato dall’incontro con Lena, sconvolto nelle sue certezze ma sempre umile e pronto al sacrificio. Un Giovanni Battista, il reverendo Hightower, nato da una coppia di età avanzata, con una unica missione da compiere, andare a Jefferson, nel Mississippi, nel luogo in cui suo nonno, alla guida di un pugno di soldati confederati, fu ucciso nel corso di un’azione militare intrapresa per distruggere i depositi del generale Grant. C’è una Maria Maddalena, Joanna Burden, la donna che dedica la sua vita ad aiutare i negri come una croce per l’espiazione dei peccati dei bianchi, colei che verrà presa da passione furiosa, dopo una vita triste da zitella, per Joe Christmas, uno che non sa neanche che cosa sia, solo Dio padre sa se nelle sue vene scorra sangue bianco o nero, abbandonato da neonato sulla strada la notte della Vigilia di Natale e cresciuto in un orfanotrofio fino a quando è stato adottato da una coppia senza figli che lo cresce tra obblighi rigorosi e punizioni esemplari per farne un perfetto cristiano, quando invece il risultato sarà tutt’altro. Christmas è il personaggio più inquietante e contemporaneamente più affascinante del romanzo, nei cui confronti si prova pietà, disprezzo, orrore, pena. Colui che, come nel rito sacrificale della celebrazione eucaristica, offre il suo sangue e il suo corpo in sacrificio per l’umanità. Il sacrificio di sé stesso per liberare il mondo dal Maligno. E intorno ai protagonisti profeti schiamazzanti che predicano l’avvento del regno di Dio per pulire la terra dalla sozzura e l’abominio della razza negra, sceriffi con la stella di latta che inseguono per le strade impolverate i criminali, negri talmente scuri da essere invisibili al mondo e gli abitanti bianchi di Jefferson che fungono da spettatori alla tragedia in atto, bravi cristiani che girano con le Bibbie in mano e frequentano ogni domenica la chiesa, preda di una isteria razziale che li porta a condannare senza appello il sangue negro ovunque esso scorra.
Un capolavoro scritto con una scrittura affilata come una lama, asciutta ed essenziale, da leggere perché ci insegni “quanto sia falso anche il più profondo dei libri quando lo si applica alla vita”.
July 31, 2020
Not sure where to start with this review. I can’t lie, I found Light in August by William Faulkner to be a gruelling experience. I oscillated between a 1-star to a 5-star experience at various times, depending on the chapter. My only other Faulkner read As I Lay Dying I found to be a lot more enjoyable. I found As I Lay Dying a little more understandable and predictable than Light in August – I could get into a rhythm.
I achieved no such rhythm with this book.
There were times I enjoyed this story, usually when I was fully engaged and totally immersed, when the writing seemed understandable and Faulkner wasn’t doing anything too clever for me. However, there were many times I became downright frustrated where even re-reading passages proved fruitless, and it just wasn’t enjoyable.
Some of the important themes as I see it are (Be Gentle):
Racism
I couldn’t believe how much the “N” word was used. This isn’t a criticism as such, more of a confronting observation. It certainly is a sign of the times (Civil War to the early 1900s) and it did help me understand how ingrained some of the attitudes towards race must be in the US. The early 1900s isn’t that long ago really. The fact I am currently listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has an equal dose of the use of the “N” word didn’t help. Huckleberry Finn is even worse in some ways because the Children, such as Huck, use the word freely.
Religion
There’s a fair share of overly pious people in this story, such as the sadistic Joe Christmas’ adoptive father Mr McEachern, and the catatonically insane Mr Hines. Well they all seem to be nutcases, horrible, distasteful and violent people. Not sure if Faulkner is making a statement about religion and the hypocrisy of it all. I reckon he might be.
Kindness
Kindness doesn’t seem to be well rewarded – some of the characters who exhibit kindness include Joe Christmas’ adoptive Mother, Mrs McEachern and Mrs Burden, Joe’s landlady and ‘lover’. I am not so sure their compassion and good intentions were paid in kind. I am uncertain if it’s because they are kind, or women or both. Probably both.
Characters
Joe Christmas must be one of the most detestable characters I have ‘met’. Totally misanthropic and equally sadistic. I really felt sorry for anyone he came across – my views are, he was a product of the sadistic, cruel and depraved upbringing he experienced. Poor bastard.
Lena Grove was a delight, a bit naïve though. The book really starts and finishes with her and I must say, considering this book was a miserable experience, I did like the way it finished, gave me some reason to be optimistic.
Bryon Bunch – for some reason his name made me laugh because it was so close and easily confused with the name Lucas Burch. I did love that farcical confusion, and I found it very funny. Not sure if it was supposed to be funny – but I found it so, still do.
Mr and Mrs Hines, What a strange couple, Mr Hines (Uncle Doc) was a complete Muppet with no redeeming qualities at all, whereas his long-suffering wife was really trying to be her best and one could only feel for her regarding the cards she had been dealt in life – poor thing.
I wasn’t sure what to make of Reverend Gail Hightower. I felt sorry for him peering through his window at the street all the time. He was so lonely – however, he wasn’t the only lonely character in this story, that’s for sure. I think he was a good man, but I did get lost in his back story and his thoughts, I really did. But at this time of the book I was suffering from Stage 4 Faulkner Fatigue.
My Struggle
For me this book was difficult. Particularly, as the author flitted between timelines, especially during the back-stories of Joe Christmas and Rev Hightower all this while he was chucking in confusing stream-of-consciousness (I remember that from As I lay Dying) reflections. It was just plain confusing for me at times, and un-enjoyable. I suppose this is what ‘high-level’ literature is all about, it sorts the wheat out from the chaff. I was ready to pack the whole thing in at around the three-quarter mark.
In some ways this book reminded me of my experiences watching films by David Lynch, I am still convinced some of Lynch’s work is not meant to make sense. Is that the case with Faulkner’s work? Maybe someone who knows more than I do can help answer that.
Overall, bloody hard work, a real slog but kind of worthwhile. I do feel like I’ve run a marathon and am happy I finished it.
3 Stars
I achieved no such rhythm with this book.
There were times I enjoyed this story, usually when I was fully engaged and totally immersed, when the writing seemed understandable and Faulkner wasn’t doing anything too clever for me. However, there were many times I became downright frustrated where even re-reading passages proved fruitless, and it just wasn’t enjoyable.
Some of the important themes as I see it are (Be Gentle):
Racism
I couldn’t believe how much the “N” word was used. This isn’t a criticism as such, more of a confronting observation. It certainly is a sign of the times (Civil War to the early 1900s) and it did help me understand how ingrained some of the attitudes towards race must be in the US. The early 1900s isn’t that long ago really. The fact I am currently listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has an equal dose of the use of the “N” word didn’t help. Huckleberry Finn is even worse in some ways because the Children, such as Huck, use the word freely.
Religion
There’s a fair share of overly pious people in this story, such as the sadistic Joe Christmas’ adoptive father Mr McEachern, and the catatonically insane Mr Hines. Well they all seem to be nutcases, horrible, distasteful and violent people. Not sure if Faulkner is making a statement about religion and the hypocrisy of it all. I reckon he might be.
Kindness
Kindness doesn’t seem to be well rewarded – some of the characters who exhibit kindness include Joe Christmas’ adoptive Mother, Mrs McEachern and Mrs Burden, Joe’s landlady and ‘lover’. I am not so sure their compassion and good intentions were paid in kind. I am uncertain if it’s because they are kind, or women or both. Probably both.
Characters
Joe Christmas must be one of the most detestable characters I have ‘met’. Totally misanthropic and equally sadistic. I really felt sorry for anyone he came across – my views are, he was a product of the sadistic, cruel and depraved upbringing he experienced. Poor bastard.
Lena Grove was a delight, a bit naïve though. The book really starts and finishes with her and I must say, considering this book was a miserable experience, I did like the way it finished, gave me some reason to be optimistic.
Bryon Bunch – for some reason his name made me laugh because it was so close and easily confused with the name Lucas Burch. I did love that farcical confusion, and I found it very funny. Not sure if it was supposed to be funny – but I found it so, still do.
Mr and Mrs Hines, What a strange couple, Mr Hines (Uncle Doc) was a complete Muppet with no redeeming qualities at all, whereas his long-suffering wife was really trying to be her best and one could only feel for her regarding the cards she had been dealt in life – poor thing.
I wasn’t sure what to make of Reverend Gail Hightower. I felt sorry for him peering through his window at the street all the time. He was so lonely – however, he wasn’t the only lonely character in this story, that’s for sure. I think he was a good man, but I did get lost in his back story and his thoughts, I really did. But at this time of the book I was suffering from Stage 4 Faulkner Fatigue.
My Struggle
For me this book was difficult. Particularly, as the author flitted between timelines, especially during the back-stories of Joe Christmas and Rev Hightower all this while he was chucking in confusing stream-of-consciousness (I remember that from As I lay Dying) reflections. It was just plain confusing for me at times, and un-enjoyable. I suppose this is what ‘high-level’ literature is all about, it sorts the wheat out from the chaff. I was ready to pack the whole thing in at around the three-quarter mark.
In some ways this book reminded me of my experiences watching films by David Lynch, I am still convinced some of Lynch’s work is not meant to make sense. Is that the case with Faulkner’s work? Maybe someone who knows more than I do can help answer that.
Overall, bloody hard work, a real slog but kind of worthwhile. I do feel like I’ve run a marathon and am happy I finished it.
3 Stars
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